Cuts of more than 1,300 employees were announced from the U.S. Department of Education this week and the Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and President Donald Trump have said the cuts and changes are an effort designed to send education authority back to states.
Ohio’s local school districts already get significant funding from the state of Ohio and from local property taxes. That money is not controlled by the federal government.
Melissa Cropper, the president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers, one of the teachers’ unions, said the people who will be harmed by these cuts are children, college students and families. She said the U.S. Department of Education gives Ohio schools about $1.3 billion.
“Firing more than 1,300 Department of Education workers, including hundreds who work on student financial aid and civil rights protections, will not reduce the deficit,” Cropper said. “Rather, it will create enormous harm by eroding the government’s ability to support successful strategies that improve children’s academic outcomes and help students afford higher education.”
Trump has announced plans to give block grants of the federal funding that local schools would have gotten to states. But the details of that plan are not clear.
Greg Lawson, a research fellow with the Buckeye Institute, a conservative leaning think tank in Ohio, said he thinks school officials are right to be worried about the cuts to the education department, but long-term, he believes the money will still be available to schools.
Federal funding approved by Congress and administered through the U.S. Department of Education accounted for 11% of all public school revenue in the state of Ohio last year, according to a recent Ohio Legislative Budget Office report.
Those grants fund more than a dozen programs that support impoverished and low achieving students, early learning and preschool, homeless children, free meal programs for hungry students, rural education, career and technical grants, neglected and delinquent children, and more than 61,000 English learners, U.S. Department of Education data shows.
Lawson said the switch from receiving funds directly from the federal government to receiving them through the states might cause some problems.
“Nobody knows for sure how it’s going to look and what many of the mechanics are going to be,” Lawson said. “So even if you didn’t have a total reduction in spending, you could have hiccups in how the money gets distributed.”
States would have to figure out what they want to do with it and possibly change formulas, Lawson said.
Lawson noted that the federal Department of Education is one of the newest agencies, created in the 1970s.
Shannon Cox, Montgomery County Educational Service Center superintendent, said that even if the grants don’t immediately go to the states, it’s possible the money would go through other federal agencies.
All districts in the region receive at least some money from the U.S. Department of Education, whether it is to support students with special needs, teach students who fell behind, or support the McKenny-Vento program, which supports homeless students.
Megan Sparks, a board member for Centerville Schools, said the district expects to get about $3.3 million in federal funding for this school year, most of which would go toward special education.
“Overall, 42 positions are either fully or partially funded by federal grant dollars,” Sparks said. “It is unclear how the significant changes to the US Department of Education will impact school districts.”
Dayton Public Schools treasurer Hiwot Abraha said the total federal fund appropriation for this school year is about $43 million, while the district’s entire budget is about $416 million. DPS is a much bigger school district with more students and a higher rate of poverty than others in the region, so it receives more federal support.
Dayton Board of Education member Jocelyn Rhynard said this week she and other district leaders are not clear exactly how these cuts will affect local schools.
“We rely on millions of dollars to fund special education teachers for the many students we have with disabilities,” Rhynard said.
She said she had a conversation with Congressman Mike Turner’s office about the importance of the Department of Education while she was in Washington, D.C., last month.
She said what President Donald Trump, DOGE and Elon Musk are doing to education and students' lives are “the exact opposite of improvement or efficiency.”
“It is cruel and will harm millions of students,” Rhynard said.
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