Nov. 23—ROCHESTER — Minnesota’s public schools are receiving millions of dollars in federal funding, and state education leaders are unsure what to expect in light of President-elect Donald Trump’s hints that he would eliminate the U.S. Department of Education .
Rochester Public Schools Superintendent Kent Pekel said it is too early to plan the district’s activities around what will or will not happen under the new administration, but that it is difficult to imagine the federal department fully will disappear.
“If it didn’t exist, you would have to largely reinvent it,” Pekel said of the Ministry of Education. “You would have to move the functions to other agencies because I think very few Americans would want to see them disappear altogether.”
He then emphasized the federal department’s role in administering student loans, conducting education-oriented research and providing funding for special education.
Minnesota leaders also aren’t sure what education might look like under a new administration. Minnesota Department of Education communications director Sam Snuggerud said it’s too early to comment on what lies ahead for the state department in light of speculation about its federal counterpart.
“MDE remains committed to ensuring that every student receives a world-class education from qualified teachers in a safe, nurturing school environment, regardless of who is elected in Washington, DC or St. Paul,” Snuggerud said via email after the election .
On Thursday, November 21, U.S. Senator Mike Rounds, a Republican from South Dakota, introduced a bill to eliminate the Department of Education. Under the proposed bill, DOE duties would be redistributed among other federal departments.
“Local school boards and state departments of education know best what their students need, not the unelected bureaucrats in Washington, DC,” Rounds said in a statement. “For years I have been working to remove the federal Ministry of Education. I am pleased that President-elect Trump shares this vision, and I look forward to working with him and the Republican majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives to make this a success. reality. This legislation is a roadmap to eliminate the federal Department of Education by virtually relocating these federal programs to the departments where they belong, which will be critical as we move into next year.”
Chris Williams, press secretary for the national teachers union Education Minnesota, also said it is too early to say anything definitive about the potential impact of the new presidential administration on Minnesota schools.
In the grand scheme of history, it wasn’t that long ago that the federal department was created in its current form. It came under Jimmy Carter’s administration in 1979 through the Department of Education Organization Act.
However, according to a history on the department’s website, an “bureau of education” existed as early as 1868. The history on the department’s website goes on to say that “the agency remained relatively small over the years, operating under different titles and housed in different agencies.”
In the 1950s, the federal government began spending more money on science-based education programs, in the wake of the space race with the Soviet Union. The federal government continued to expand its education priorities until the creation of the department itself.
“This expansion continued in the 1970s with national efforts to help racial minorities, women, people with disabilities, and non-English-speaking students gain equal access to education,” the department’s history reads.
Despite the Department of Education’s role in funding schools, actual policy, curriculum and standards – the core of education itself – are delegated to the individual states.
There has been speculation about the future of the Department of Education since long before Election Day. In addition to Trump’s own guidance, the possibility of downsizing the department was also part of Project 2025, a political playbook drawn up by the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, which is not officially affiliated with the presidential administration.
According to neaToday, a publication of the National Education Association, the overall goal of Project 2025 is to reduce the federal role in education to “that of a statistics-gathering agency that disseminates information to the states.”
The NEA further said that Project 2025 would put more emphasis on “already tight education budgets” and would undermine “the academic outcomes of 2.8 million of the country’s most vulnerable students.”
Although state governments control most aspects of public school operations, the federal department still plays a role. In Rochester, federal funding represents 4% of the school district’s 2024-2025 budget, which amounts to more than $17 million.
Similar to the focus on science education in the 1950s, leading up to the department’s founding, today’s students are entering a world of constant technological change. Pekel said it’s hard to see how abolishing the federal department would be helpful.
“No high-performing system would do this; no high-performing company would say, ‘let’s get rid of the central-level strategy,'” Pekel said. “I think we’ve learned that anything is possible.”
