Spring cleaning shouldn’t mean sweeping our schools away

A version of this column originally appeared in The Alpena News.

The transition to spring is an exciting time for Michiganders as our days are filled with more sunlight and Midwest sunsets reward us for enduring another long winter. Spring is also one of the most exciting times for our schools. As winter sports come to a close, proud parents, excited friends, and supportive members of communities will be lining the streets of their hometowns, dressed in school colors and waving signs to give high school athletes a proper send-off on their way to regional championships and state finals.

Scenes like these showcase how important our public schools are to local communities because our schools are a source of pride and identity for our communities — and for far more than athletic achievements. These feelings of pride and importance are two of many reasons that local school board governance is a generally non-controversial mechanism for running our schools. After all, nobody knows the needs of students like their own administrators, teachers and parents.

While it is true that key decisions about how local schools run are made by local school boards and administrators, we often don’t see that this local decision-making is made possible by an important “silent partner”: the federal Department of Education (DOE). 

The DOE has two main roles that impact how students in our state are educated. First, it provides funding to our public schools through grants. The biggest of these grants is Title I funding, which is distributed to schools based on the number of students enrolled who are economically disadvantaged. Schools use Title I funds to pay for programs and services to increase academic performance. Other grants from the DOE provide professional development for teachers, career and technical education opportunities, and school breakfast and lunch. These grants from the federal DOE provide about 10% of the state’s school budget, which amounts to $2.3 billion in the current school year.  

The second major responsibility of the DOE is supporting and protecting students with disabilities, who account for about 15% of students statewide. The DOE administers the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which ensures that these students receive a fair and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment. Students are entitled to services they need in order to make education accessible for them while remaining in general education classrooms as much as possible. For example, a student with hearing loss may need their teacher to wear a special microphone so they can hear lessons in a classroom with their peers. In the case of a 504,  a student with diabetes may need permission to leave class or eat snacks when medically necessary. The Department’s role is critical for providing information and protection for these students and their parents through information, legal protection and over $460 million of funding in Michigan.

Linda McMahon, now the U.S. Secretary of Education, echoed President Trump’s plan to take spring cleaning to the DOE. The plan would likely begin by transferring some services the DOE provides to other departments and then relying on congressional approval to close the department altogether. While moving the responsibility of distributing funding and overseeing special education services to other departments may not sound like a threat, even a best-case scenario is a loss for Michigan’s students. 

Title I funds not only pay for programs to enhance the educational experience of our students, but the funds are targeted to the schools and students who need them most. Even if the funds are kept whole and distributed utilizing another department, such as the Department of Health and Human Services, the combination of the loss of DOE expertise and strain on another department facing personnel cuts is worrisome. 

Likewise, protections for students with disabilities and financial support for the services they require are at stake. Some information on 504 plans has already been removed from the DOE’s website. Eliminating or reducing federal support for these students is potentially disastrous for their education and for our public schools as a whole. The Education Law Center estimates that eliminating IDEA funding would equate to a job loss of over 11,000 professionals in Michigan alone. 

A cut from any part of a school’s budget means reallocating resources and funds elsewhere. A cut to support staff for special education students doesn’t just mean those students’ services are reduced; it also means more responsibility falls on the general education teacher, spreading their time and energy thinner. A cut to school meals doesn’t just harm students who eat them; it means schools will have to cut funding from other services — athletics, libraries, or tutoring programs, for example — to help cover the federal funds that no longer exist. 

It is entirely possible that next spring will look a lot less celebratory for schools as they may find themselves cleaning their budgets of special programs as a result of federal funding cuts.