The layoffs at the Department of Education affect offices responsible for overseeing special education and civil rights.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A new round of layoffs at the Education Department is draining an agency that was hit hard during the Trump administration’s previous mass layoffs, threatening further disruption for the nation’s students and schools in areas ranging from special education to civil rights enforcement to after-school programs.

The Trump administration began laying off 466 Department of Education employees on Friday, part of massive government layoffs intended to pressure Democratic lawmakers over the federal government shutdown. The layoffs would reduce the agency’s workforce by nearly a fifth and bring it to less than half its size when President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20.

The cuts are part of Trump’s broader plan to close the Department of Education and turn over its operations to other agencies. Over the summer, the department began handing its adult education and workforce programs to the Labor Department, and it previously announced it was negotiating a deal to transfer its $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio to the Treasury Department.

Department officials did not release details about the layoffs and did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Local 252 of the American Federation of Government Employees, a union that represents more than 2,700 department employees, said information provided by employees indicates the budget cuts will decimate many offices within the agency.

Nearly all top officials in the office responsible for implementing the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, a federal law that ensures millions of students with disabilities are supported by their schools, have been fired, except for a handful, the union said. An unknown number of people are facing charges against the Office for Civil Rights, which investigates complaints of discrimination at schools and universities nationwide.

Programs that oversee federal money are losing staff

The layoffs would eliminate teams that oversee the flow of grants to schools across the country, the union said. This affects the office that oversees Title I funding for the nation’s low-income schools as well as the team that manages 21st Century Community Learning Centers, the primary source of federal funding for after-school and summer learning programs.

Without staff overseeing funding for high-poverty schools or special education, schools could face delays in receiving reimbursements from the federal government, said Sasha Pudelski, advocacy director for the American Association of School Administrators.

“We’re talking about the people who worked at the 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 cuts, on top of previous layoffs, “will double the harm to K-12 students, students with disabilities, first-generation students, low-income students, teachers and local school boards.”

The Department of Education had about 4,100 employees when Trump took office. After the new layoffs, that figure reportedly fell to fewer than 2,000. Earlier layoffs in March cut the department by about half, but some employees were rehired after managers deemed they had cut too much.

Advocates question how the United States will meet its special education obligations

The new layoffs have drawn condemnation from various educational organizations. Although states design their own competitions to distribute federal funds to afterschool programs, a small team of federal officials has provided “absolutely essential” guidance and support, said Jodi Grant, executive director of the Afterschool Alliance.

“Firing this team is shocking, devastating, completely baseless, and threatens to cause lasting damage,” Grant said in a statement.

If continued, the cuts will make it impossible for the government to meet its obligations to implement 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 about 200 workers to about five, said Katy Neas, CEO of The Arc of the United States, which advocates for the rights of people with disabilities. Neas, who helped lead the office under former President Joe Biden, said families rely on these teams to ensure states and schools follow complex disability laws.

A prominent example dates back to Trump’s first term, when the Office of Special Education determined that Texas had illegally capped the number of students who could receive special education services in each district. Under pressure from the U.S. Department of Education, Texas lawmakers lifted the cap in 2017.

“As a result, tens of thousands of children in Texas can now access the educational support they need, where before they could not,” Neas said.

The government’s latest layoffs are being challenged in court by the American Federation of Government Employees and other national unions. Their suit, filed in San Francisco, claims the government’s budget and personnel departments exceeded their authority by ordering agencies to make layoffs in response to the shutdown.

In a court filing, the Trump administration said the executive branch has broad discretion to reduce the federal workforce. He said unions could not prove the layoffs harmed them because employees would not actually be laid off until 30 to 60 days after receiving notice. ___

AP Education Writer Annie Ma contributed to this report.

___

Associated Press education coverage receives financial support from several private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropic organizations, a list of supporters, and funded coverage areas at AP.org.