The Trump administration has taken several steps toward dismantling the U.S. Department of Education in recent weeks.
The department’s staff has been cut nearly in half. The administration has announced plans to move federal student loans and programs for students with disabilities to other agencies.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon appeared at an education technology conference at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in downtown San Diego on Tuesday.
About two dozen people protested outside.
“I come from, like most of us, a purple family. We were across the political spectrum,” said Jay Steiger, a teacher in the Poway Unified School District. “The thing that used to unite us is we are all in favor of public education. And so seeing it become this political football is really disheartening and disturbing.”
Last week, the Department of Education told states that it could withhold Title I funding from schools over the use of diversity, equity and inclusion practices.
The letter said that any violation of civil rights law, “including the use of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (‘DEI’) programs to advantage one’s race over another — is impermissible. The use of certain DEI practices can violate federal law.”
“I think discrimination is the bad thing,” McMahon said at the conference Tuesday. “We shouldn’t have discrimination anywhere, whether it’s religious, whether it’s race, whether it’s sex, there should be no discrimination.”
Title I directs funding to high-poverty schools. The San Diego Unified School District relies on that funding to support its most vulnerable students, said Cody Petterson, president of the school board.
“Those are our funds. They're paid for by our taxes,” he said in an interview. “It's really concerning when we start thinking about how we're going to backfill what the federal government has committed.”
The department has asked state and local education agencies to sign a form declaring that their schools don’t have DEI programs that violate civil rights law. California leaders have told schools they don’t need to respond, according to the Associated Press.
The Education Department has also frozen millions of dollars in teacher training grants to institutions that taught what it called “inappropriate and unnecessary topics.” Examples included acknowledging systemic forms of oppression like racism and homophobia.
