WASHINGTON — At least 50 employees are leaving the Chicago office of the U.S. Department of Education, nearly all through layoffs announced by the Trump administration Tuesday, according to documents sent to union officials from the Education Department.
The layoffs are among more than 1,300 announced Tuesday as part of a reorganization that’s seen as a prelude to President Donald Trump’s plan to dismantle the agency.
An employee in the Chicago office, who asked not to be named to protect their privacy, said Chicago was one of seven regional Office for Civil Rights sites around the country where all positions were eliminated. The office is tasked with enforcing federal civil rights laws in schools. Their last day is supposed to be March 21.
A staff roster sent by the Education Department to AFGE Local 252, which represents department employees, names 43 impacted Chicago union staffers. At least non-union seven managers in one unit are not included. The list includes 27 staffers in the Office of Civil Rights and 12 in Federal Student Aid, which oversees federal college financial aid. The roster includes lawyers, “equal opportunity specialists,” accountants, financial analysts and lender review specialists. A total of 969 union employees nationally were impacted. The list includes staff who took buyouts or other incentives before Tuesday's layoffs.
Illinois education union leaders decried the layoffs.
“There is a tsunami coming from Washington to every child in this state and country with the destruction,” Illinois Federation of Teachers President Dan Montgomery said Wednesday morning. “It's not efficiency … It's destruction of [the] Department of Education because this administration in Washington wants to give huge tax breaks to billionaires.”
Al Llorens, president of Illinois Education Association, noted the potential impact on special education students. The Department of Education has key oversight special education services and funding.
”Ninety percent of the students in our state attend public schools and 95% of students with disabilities are students within our buildings,” Llorens said in a statement. “Making broad-based cuts like those ordered today doesn’t affect faceless bureaucrats; it affects our kids. We will fight this action.”
The layoffs are part of a dramatic downsizing directed by Trump as he moves to reduce the footprint of the federal government. Thousands of jobs are expected to be cut across the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Social Security Administration and other agencies.
The department is also terminating leases on buildings in cities including New York, Boston, Chicago and Cleveland, said Rachel Oglesby, the department’s chief of staff. She said the changes would not affect the agency’s Office for Civil Rights or its functions mandated by Congress, such as the distribution of federal aid to schools.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon told employees to brace for profound cuts in a memo issued March 3, the day she was confirmed by the Senate. She said it was the department’s “final mission” to eliminate bureaucratic bloat and turn over the agency’s authority to states.
The department sent an email to employees Tuesday telling them its Washington headquarters and regional offices would be closed Wednesday, with access forbidden, before reopening Thursday. The only reason given for the closures was unspecified “security reasons.”
Trump campaigned on a promise to close the department, saying it had been overtaken by “radicals, zealots and Marxists.” At McMahon’s confirmation hearing, she acknowledged only Congress has the power to abolish the agency but said it might be due for cuts and a reorganization.
Whether the cuts will be felt by America’s students — as Democrats and advocates fear — is yet to be seen. Already there are concerns the administration’s agenda has pushed aside some of the agency’s most fundamental work, including the enforcement of civil rights for students with disabilities and the management of $1.6 trillion in federal student loans.
McMahon told lawmakers at her hearing that her aim is not to defund core programs, but to make them more efficient.
Even before the layoffs, the Education Department was among the smallest Cabinet-level agencies. Its workforce included 3,100 people in Washington and an additional 1,100 at regional offices across the country, according to a department website.
The department’s workers had faced increasing pressure to quit their jobs since Trump took office, first through a deferred resignation program and then through a $25,000 buyout offer that expired March 3. The buyout offer came with a warning that there would be “significant layoffs in the near future.”
Contributing: Kate Grossman, Anna Savchenko
