The Trump administration has tried to downplay the effects of potentially dismantling the Department of Education by saying crucial programs for kids with disabilities would be moved to the Department of Health and Human Services. But HHS is in the midst of its own widespread layoffs, with thousands of workers losing their jobs and critical programs being cut, and advocates worry what could happen if a crucial education program is moved from one agency in turmoil to another.
When President Donald Trump signed an executive order with the goal of dismantling the Department of Education last month, he told reporters that a key function of the agency — ensuring children with disabilities receive equal access to a quality education — would be “immediately” moved to HHS.
The Education Department is in charge of serving the more than 7 million children with disabilities who attend public school in the U.S., including by providing them with individualized education plans, speech therapists and special education teachers.
The president has offered no more details about how this move may happen, but both Education Secretary Linda McMahon and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have expressed their support for the proposal. It’s unclear if the administration envisions staff from the Education Department moving to HHS to administer the program or current HHS employees taking it over. Just weeks before Trump signed the order, he laid off nearly half of the employees at the Education Department, including some who worked in special education programs.
Neither department responded to HuffPost’s request for comment.
Administration officials have pointed to the fact that programs for students with disabilities have been handled by HHS before. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which is the law that created and regulates special education services, was passed in 1975 — before the Education Department even existed.
Trump can’t move programs from one agency to another without congressional approval. The law requires oversight of IDEA to be done at the Department of Education, and Congress would have to amend existing law or create an entirely new one in order to shuffle programs around. Dismantling the department entirely would also require an act of Congress.
“But there’s still a difference between something being legal versus it being the right thing to do,” said Robyn Linscott, the director of education and family policy at the Arc, a disability equality nonprofit organization. “And advocates are united in saying this isn’t the right thing for students with disabilities.”
And even as the administration offers assurances that the programs that serve vulnerable students will be fine, they’re also causing widespread chaos and uncertainty at the department that’s supposedly going to take over key programs.
As HHS workers arrived to work on Tuesday, many of them found that the badges they normally use to access their building no longer worked because they had been part of the latest round of mass layoffs to hit the federal government since Trump returned to power in January. Among the programs targeted for cuts is one that serves adults with disabilities.
“The recent mass layoffs at HHS affecting employees at the CDC, FDA, and other federal health agencies are dangerous, irresponsible, and unacceptable,” Everett Kelley, the American Federation of Government Employees president, which represents 820,000 federal employees, said in a statement. “Cutting 10,000 critical public health jobs puts every American at risk – weakening our defenses against disease outbreaks, unsafe medications, and contaminated food.”
Even before the massive cuts at HHS, advocates said the agency didn’t have the resources to effectively oversee special education. “HHS is not equipped to do this,” Linscott said.
Without the expertise of the Department of Education, it’s unclear if disabled students would begin to fall through the cracks or even be educated at all, like they frequently did prior to the passage of the IDEA.
“Special education is a service, not a place,” Linscott said. “We want our students to be supported by an agency that looks at them as a whole person.”
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Trump’s announcement that HHS would handle special education — and then the lack of follow-up explanation — embodies the havoc that his administration is wreaking on the federal government and the people who rely on it.
“Those of us who work in this space are confused about what this announcement means,” Linscott said. “I can’t imagine how parents who have full-time jobs and are caring for their kids with disabilities are dealing with this.”