With a promise to reform the Department of Education, President Donald Trump is working to dissolve the organization, a promise he made multiple times throughout the last few years. On March 20 Trump signed an executive order to begin dismantling the Department of Education (DOE), a move some say is necessary since it was created by Congress in 1979.
However, students like Vanshdeep Singh, ’26 said he believes the Trump Administration does not have the ability to close the DOE.
“He might be able to, but by like his how he views his government,” Singh said. “He won’t really be able to, because it’s more of like a grand scheme of how much Congress agrees on it, because you can’t do it just alone.”
AP US History teacher Jeffery Lopo said he feels Trump closing the DOE should be an act of Congress, instead of an executive order.
“I think it just kind of demonstrates the fact that America has always been a nonintellectual society,” Lopo said. “I think it just demonstrates to see the attacks from JD Vance on professors and other intellectuals. They’re kind of just proving that point.”
On Apr. 14, Trump announced he will be withholding $2.2 billion in funding from Harvard due to alleged antisemitism, a move Harvard deemed unconstitutional. Lopo added how he thinks Trump could attempt to use this ability to withhold funding to make primary and secondary schools to make them act in a way he wants them to.
“There’s only so many things that the Federal Department of Education does,” Lopo said. “Trump is already threatening the state of Maine with lawsuit over 42 practices, why wouldn’t he threaten school funding?”
Singh said he feels the Trump Administration’s actions regarding revoking funding for schools like Harvard is not allowed.
“Michigan has subsided from the DEI things, they overruled it. Many schools are going to tend to probably increase prices on how the tuition goes,” Singh said. “Certain schools already received low enough funding from the federal government, and they’ll probably receive even less, if not invited by Trump to receive more funding.”
Principal Kenneth Cucchi acknowledges how the shuttering of the DOE may play into the amount of federal funding that Stevenson High School receives.
“We get additional money for special education, for different programs, for free lunch, and kids who are at risk academically,” Cucchi said. “And we do a lot of we get a lot of grant money for the government.”
Cucchi talked about how the government is trying to push the d e c i s i on – m a k i ng back to the states but is worried about how funding will work.
“ T h e government is not sending the money down with the state either,” Cucchi said. “So that’s going to be a connection, a disconnect, between the federal government, the state government.”
One of the big things the DOE funds are student loans and scholarships for students across the country. Programs students use to pay for college could be affected including Pell Grants and FASFA. If the DOE is dissolved many students may be left in the dark when it comes to how they will pay for college.
While Cucchi said that he personally believes students should have to pay back their loans, but student loan prices should be decreased because the prices seem to rise every year.
“I feel bad for kids coming out of school having to go ahead and take off these dynamic loans to pay for college. It’s not fair to anybody,” Cucchi said. “So, I wish the college, I wish the government would get oversight, oversee public universities and that step in with that would do with the increases there. I personally don’t think that there’s people forgiveness.”
One of the biggest pushes the Trump administration has pushed for is an end to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs across the nation.
In fact, in November 2023 Trump equated himself to Abraham Lincoln saying that he has done more for African Americans than any other president. However, during his first administration however, he called funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities “unconstitutional” yet in April he signed Executive Order 14283 which protects the HBCU communities.
The NAACP issued a statement on April 23 stating this is an empty gesture to hide the dismantling of public education through the DOE. Singh said he is confused about Trumps wishy washy approach and opposing opinions on HBCUs and believes funding could eventually be taken away by Trump’s administration.
“They don’t want people to learn about, like, what’s really happening,” Singh said. “My brother who is a political science major told me that everything is based off, everything is based off of law and race. And you can’t really just have something, oh, there’s going to benefit everybody. It’s not true.”
Lopo added how his disbelief at Trump’s claims about his support for HBCUs and is concerned with the administration’s inconsistent positions on DEI.
“That’s the whole thing,” Lopo said. “Like, how is that not DEI, yet everything else he claims then is, with the HBCU funding as a political bargaining chip.
