GEORGIA — A Georgia teachers’ organization had a four-word response to President Donald Trump’s efforts to dismantle the Department of Education: “See you in court.”
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The president of the Georgia Federation of Teachers said the state stands to lose billions of dollars in federal funding if the agency is eliminated.
“We’re gonna be hit financially very hard,” said Verdaillia Turner, a retired teacher. “Our schools will begin to lose services and our children will lose services.”
The U.S. Department of Education was established in 1979 and oversees the funding of a host of programs. Every year, hundreds of millions of dollars go to Georgia’s Title I schools; those are schools with high percentages of children in low-income families. It also funds school lunch programs and services for students with disabilities. Turner said losing the agency would deprive states and school systems of much-needed funds.
“Especially our rural school districts and our smaller school districts who don’t have the tax base that some of the larger districts will have,” she said.
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But Josh McKoon, chairman of Georgia’s Republican Party, said dismantling the agency will make things easier for school districts.
“Well, honestly, I don’t think we would notice much of a difference other than local school districts not having to jump through as many hoops to participate in various federal programs,” he said.
Federal funding would still get to the schools, he said, likely in the form of block grants. Those grants would allow the states and school systems to decide for themselves how the money is spent.
“We’ve got a lot of highly paid federal bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., that are there basically to navigate all this red tape around these programs,” he said.
“Decisions on how to spend federal funds should be left up to the states and local districts,” McKoon said.
“I believe those people are in a better position to make the decisions, and if they make the wrong decisions, they’re more likely to be held accountable than faceless bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.,” he said.
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Channel 2′s Bryan Mims reached out to the Georgia Department of Education for a response to the elimination of the federal agency. Meghan Frick, a spokesperson, wrote in an email that “the information available to our agency has not changed at this time. Education funding – including the Title I and IDEA – is allocated by Congress. We have received no indication at this time that the allocations will change.”
Fulton County Schools spokesperson Brian Noyes also sent a written statement, saying district officials are closely monitoring the situation. “While it’s too early to determine what, if any, changes this may bring to the local level, our focus remains ensuring that students in Fulton County Schools receive a high-quality education.”
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