Trump signed an executive order Thursday calling for the elimination of the Department of Education. The Associated Press reports eliminating the department would be difficult and likely require an act of Congress.
Cox expressed his support for closing the federal department Thursday during his monthly news conference. He said his wife is a special education teacher and has seen the “overwhelming regulatory burden of the federal government.”
“We literally have special ed teachers that do no teaching,” he said. “All they do is, they're required to fill out form after form, report after report.”
Cox said bureaucracy in the department prevents money from reaching students. By dismantling the department, he believes more federal dollars would be saved and set aside for states, which could then decide how to allocate the funds.
However, The Salt Lake Tribune reports those who oppose eliminating the department say without it, there’s no guarantee students will be served equally.
The department’s main role is financial; the AP reports it distributes billions in federal money to colleges and schools annually and manages federal student loans. Park City School District Board of Education Vice President Nick Hill said the federal funding the district receives is small.
“It would be hard to avoid any impact from something like that, but the extent of the impact we think would be relatively minimal to us,” he said.
Federal funding only makes up about 14% of public school budgets. Colleges and universities are more reliant on federal dollars.
Department of Education money for K-12 schools is distributed through federal programs like Title I, which provides supplemental financial assistance to school districts with children from low-income families. Funding is also provided through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to support students with disabilities, reduce class sizes and pay for social workers.
The department also handles civil rights enforcement to ensure there’s equal access to education. Through its Office for Civil Rights, the department investigates discrimination and harassment based on sex, race and national origin, age and disability.
It’s the office that investigated Park City School District last year and found over 180 incidents of harassment from 2021 to 2023. The district signed a joint resolution in March last year to resolve the investigation.
Superintendent Lyndsay Huntsman said if the Department of Education is dismantled, the district will continue following the resolution.
“Regardless of what happens at the federal level, we're committed to not only addressing what we've agreed to in the OCR resolution and the settlement, but we're also going to go above and beyond to ensure all of our students are entering a school environment free of hate speech, harassment and discrimination,” she said.
Huntsman said the district is waiting patiently to see how it might be impacted. She expects some federal funding will remain intact.
