The U.S. Department of Education is cutting nearly half its workforce. WNIJ education reporter Peter Medlin spoke with Al Llorens about the impact on Illinois schools. He's the president of the Illinois Education Association, the state's largest teachers' union.
Peter Medlin (PM): A lot of people don't understand how the federal Department of Education functions in relation to their schools. You've said that these layoffs could have a profound impact on Illinois schools. How do you think families, students, teachers, could see the impacts of these cuts locally?
Al Llorens (AL): First of all, 80% of our public schools in Illinois are underfunded. There's also a teacher and educator shortage across the board. I've been in schools in Decatur where there were three certified teachers, everyone else was a full-time sub. That had been going on for two or three years. So, if you cut funding to an already underfunded system, I think there's going to be a loss of the quality of education for a lot of those students. In the long run, what it's going to mean is, I don't think any of those students will achieve what they could have achieved had they gotten all the accommodations they needed in the first place, because they dried up the funds.
PM: Illinois schools, on average, rely on the federal government for about 12% of their revenue. It's much higher at some low-income schools, and that's thanks to programs like Title I, which provides funding to low-income schools, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) which helps fund special education services. The new Department of Education director has tried to say that people shouldn't worry about those programs and funding streams going away, that they'll still be funded by Congress, even if the Department of Education is eliminated. Project 2025, though, talks about phasing out Title I funding and converting IDEA to block grants. At this point, how concerned are you about federal funding for Title I and IDEA going away?
AL: Let me put it to you like this: it's been the forefront of what's in my mind for the last several days, and probably a little bit longer than that, because back in 1970, there wasn't a Department of Ed yet. Things were held at the state [level] in terms of accountability, and they weren't doing a good job then. The Department of Education is a centralized place that can do accountability and enforcement on all these programs. It wasn't working before the department, and I don't think that once the department is eliminated it's going to work again.
PM: That's something important to note, programs like Title I did exist before the Department of Education existed, like you just mentioned. Some conservatives in education say they want states and schools to have more flexibility in how they can spend that federal funding and that this is a way to start doing that. Do you think that they have a point?
AL: All children should have the best opportunity that they can get to get a great public education. I do not believe that, once there's no enforcement, all of those things will be in place.
PM: One of the Department of Education's other roles is investigating potential civil rights violations. There's reporting from the folks over at Chalkbeat that the entire Office of Civil Rights team based in Chicago was let go. What impact do you think that that could have?
AL: Well, if you start talking about compliance, in a perfect world, everyone would always do what they're supposed to do. In reality, we have a situation where not everybody gets equal treatment for one reason or another, because of the color of their skin, whether they're physically impaired, kids don't always get what they need. Case in point: public schools don't turn away anyone that comes to the door. Private schools cherry pick who they want to allow in. So, if we send money to those private schools that don't allow every student, certainly we're not going to have a greater scope of impact. We're going to have a lesser scope of impact on doing the best for kids.
PM: Is there anything else about this whole issue, about the Department of Education, that you just think is more important than people might realize?
AL: If there was no money to be had in public education, I don't think there would be any fervor for people to privatize public education. And so, if you look at the people that are actually going to profit from this, would they be that concerned if there was no money here? I would offer to you that I think the answer is absolutely not. Is this for the kids? Answer, no.
