Education Department layoffs hit offices that oversee special education
and civil rights enforcement
[October 14, 2025]
By COLLIN BINKLEY
WASHINGTON (AP) — A new round of layoffs at the Education Department is
depleting an agency that was hit hard in the Trump administration’s
previous mass firings, threatening new disruption to the nation’s
students and schools in areas from special education to civil rights
enforcement to after-school programs.
The Trump administration started laying off 466 Education Department
staffers on Friday amid mass firings across the government meant to
pressure Democratic lawmakers over the federal shutdown. The layoffs
would cut the agency’s workforce by nearly a fifth and leave it reduced
to less than half its size when President Donald Trump took office on
Jan. 20.
The cuts play into Trump’s broader plan to shut down the Education
Department and parcel its operations to other agencies. Over the summer,
the department started handing off its adult education and workforce
programs to the Labor Department, and it previously said it was
negotiating an agreement to pass its $1.6 trillion student loan
portfolio to the Treasury Department.
Department officials have not released details on the layoffs and did
not immediately respond to a request for comment. American Federation of
Government Employees Local 252, a union that represents more than 2,700
department workers, said information from employees indicates cuts will
decimate many offices within the agency.
All but a handful of top officials are being fired at the office that
implements the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, a federal
law that ensures millions of students with disabilities get support from
their schools, the union said. Unknown numbers are being fired at the
Office for Civil Rights, which investigates complaints of discrimination
at the nation's schools and universities.
Programs that oversee federal money lose staff
The layoffs would eliminate teams that oversee the flow of grant money
to schools across the nation, the union said. It hits the office that
oversees Title I funding for the country’s low-income schools along with
the team that manages 21st Century Community Learning Centers, the
primary federal funding source for after-school and summer learning
programs.
Without staff overseeing funding for high-poverty schools or special
education, schools may face delays in receiving reimbursement from the
federal government, said Sasha Pudelski, director of advocacy for the
American Association of School Administrators.
“We’re talking about the people who worked on the beating heart of our
federal public school programs,” Pudelski said.
The layoffs will also eliminate teams that oversee TRIO, a set of
programs that help low-income students pursue college, and another that
oversees federal funding for historically Black colleges and
universities.
In a statement, union president Rachel Gittleman said the new
reductions, on top of previous layoffs, will “double down on the harm to
K-12 students, students with disabilities, first generation college
students, low-income students, teachers and local education boards.”
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The U.S. Department of Education building is seen in Washington,
Nov. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, file)
The Education Department had about 4,100 employees when Trump took
office. After the new layoffs, it would be down to fewer than 2,000.
Earlier layoffs in March had roughly halved the department, but some
employees were hired back after officials decided they had cut too
deep.
Advocates question how US will fulfill obligations on special
education
The new layoffs drew condemnation from a range of education
organizations. Although states design their own competitions to
distribute federal funding for after-school programs, a small team
of federal officials provided guidance and support “that is
absolutely essential,” said Jodi Grant, executive director of the
Afterschool Alliance.
“Firing that team is shocking, devastating, utterly without any
basis, and it threatens to cause lasting harm,” Grant said in a
statement.
If upheld, the cuts will make it impossible for the government to
fulfill its duties carrying out special education laws, according to
a statement from the National Association of State Directors of
Special Education.
The layoffs will reduce the department's special education office
from roughly 200 workers to about five, said Katy Neas, CEO of The
Arc of the United States, which advocates for people with
disabilities. Neas, who helped lead the office under former
President Joe Biden, said families rely on those teams to make sure
states and schools are following complex disability laws.
One prominent example dates to Trump's first term, when the special
education office determined that Texas had illegally placed a cap on
the number of students who could receive special education services
in each district. Under pressure from the U.S. Education Department,
Texas lawmakers lifted the cap in 2017.
“As a result, tens of thousands of children in Texas now can access
the education support that they need, whereas before they couldn’t,”
Neas said.
The government’s latest layoffs are being challenged in court by the
American Federation of Government Employees and other national labor
unions. Their suit, filed in San Francisco, said the government’s
budgeting and personnel offices overstepped their authority by
ordering agencies to carry out layoffs in response to the shutdown.
In a court filing, the Trump administration said the executive
branch has wide discretion to reduce the federal workforce. It said
the unions could not prove they were harmed by the layoffs because
employees would not actually be separated for another 30 to 60 days
after receiving notice. ___
AP Education Writer Annie Ma contributed to this report.
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