The Trump administration has begun dismantling the U.S. Department of Education by laying off about half of the agency’s employees, casting uncertainty over how — or if — billions of federal dollars for California to help disadvantaged students and those with disabilities will be distributed, how college financial aid and student loans will be managed and how civil rights enforcement will be carried out.

In San Francisco, the regional branch of the department Office for Civil Rights — already backlogged with investigations into school-related discrimination — is expected to be closed, one of the broad effects of the layoffs that advocates say are sending tremors through school systems, including Los Angeles Unified.

“These reckless layoffs will sow chaos and confusion throughout our nation’s public school system,” said Guillermo Mayer, president and CEO of Public Advocates, a California-based law firm and advocacy group. “Instead of bolstering learning outcomes, the immediate effect of these actions is quite cruel. It forces millions of parents, especially parents of students with disabilities, to worry about whether their children will receive the services they need.”

“It strikes fear in the hearts of tens of thousands of low-income students who are now wondering, ‘What will happen to my financial aid? Will I be able to afford college?’” Mayer said.

L.A. school board member Kelly Gonez on Tuesday sponsored a resolution against cuts to federal education funding and addressed the federal layoffs Wednesday.

“We serve one of the most diverse populations in the country,” Gonez said. “We’re proud of serving immigrant families, many students of color and students from low-income backgrounds. So it’s a direct attack on the students and families that make up the majority of our students and that’s why the risk for potential harm is so great. While we’re still assessing, these are very concerning steps that we’re seeing.”

L.A. schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho said he’s concerned not only about the future levels of federal funding, but about potential policy changes to how it can be distributed, including “possibly a dilution” of the district’s $460 million in annual Title I money for academic support to offset the effects of poverty. California receives $2 billion in Title I funds, which is distributed to school districts.

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon sought to dispel concerns, saying the administration would abide by congressional funding mandates.

She said the layoffs reflect the department’s “commitment to efficiency, accountability and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents and teachers.”

When Trump took office, the Education Department’s workforce stood at 4,133, according to the administration. After the layoffs take effect, the number would be 2,183 workers, including those who previously resigned, agreed to buyouts or were fired because they were probationary employees.

“We wanted to make sure that we kept all of the right people, the good people, to make sure that the outward facing programs — the grants, the appropriations that come from Congress — all of that are being met and none of that’s going to fall through the cracks,” McMahon said in a Tuesday night interview on the Fox network.

The accelerated unwinding of the agency had been expected to be triggered by one of President Trump’s executive orders. But McMahon clearly was empowered to act without delay.

It has also become evident that the Trump administration’s effect on education has not been contingent on the existence of the Department of Education, which he pledged to shut down during his campaign, calling it “a big con job” infiltrated by “radicals, zealots and Marxists” that misused taxpayer dollars.

The administration has taken swift action to withhold funding to schools and colleges on ideological grounds. A recent policy guide directed institutions to end “discriminatory” diversity, equity and inclusion programs or risk losing federal money. Another order ended the status of transgender students as a group protected from discrimination.

Among the latest: the Trump administration’s cancellation last week of $400 million in federal grants to Columbia University because of what the government describes as the school’s failure to stop campus antisemitism. The cancellation came even though Columbia had set up a new disciplinary committee and ramped up investigations of students critical of Israel and its war in Gaza, alarming free speech advocates.

On Sunday Mahmoud Khalil, a prominent Palestinian activist and recent Columbia graduate who holds a green card, was arrested by federal immigration authorities, touching off a legal fight over his detention. The Trump administration seeks to deport him over his leadership role in pro-Palestinian protests at the university, prompting campus rallies at UCLA, UC Berkeley and other campuses in support of Khalil.

Trump has vowed to deport foreign students he described as engaging in “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.” Students say the administration is illegally attacking immigrants and free speech rights.

The University of California and USC are also under federal investigation of allegations that they have not properly addressed campus antisemitism.

Democrat-led states and groups outside government have sued to stop some orders they say are illegal and motivated by Trump’s hostility to what he characterizes as “woke” indoctrination in education.

On March 6, California joined seven other states suing the Trump administration over cancellation of grants worth $250 million to them — $600 million nationwide — for teacher training programs funded through the Education Department. The administration said the programs promote inappropriate and “divisive ideologies” linked to diversity, equity and inclusion, known as DEI. A federal judge on Monday ordered the programs reinstated while he reviewed the case.

The ‘Final Mission’

Even before she was confirmed by the Senate last week, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon was under orders from Trump to “put herself out of job” by dismantling the department.

Immediately following her confirmation, McMahon issued a staff memo, which was vague on details, talking of “Our Department’s Final Mission” — shutting itself down. The department had a pre-Trump budget this year of about $80 billion. Salary and benefits for the department were set at about $917 million.

Before McMahon assumed control, officials working with the Department of Government Efficiency, which is not a federal agency but a White House advisory team headed by billionaire Elon Musk, already had gutted the Institute of Education Sciences, which gathers data on the nation’s academic progress, and fired or suspended scores of employees.

Sara Schapiro, executive director of the Alliance for Learning Innovation, is especially concerned about those cuts: “States don’t typically have the capacity to do that kind of research and to store data. They really do rely on the federal government to publish and share gold-standard research that they can then use.”

In earlier statements both McMahon and Trump have spoken of returning authority over education to the states.

However, states already fund the vast majority of education spending and policies are largely made at the state and local school district level. Still, local officials consider the federal funding contribution — about 7% to 20% of budgets — to be vital.

While it is possible for the federal government to step back, it’s a seemingly contradictory position for Trump: He has a concurrent goal of withholding funding if a school system or university does not abide by his directives on what to teach, how to interpret civil rights, especially in regards to transgender students and promoting diversity among employees.

Alex Hertel-Fernandez, associate professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, said there is “a logical inconsistency between these positions, but that chaos, in some ways, is the point: to throw the sector into chaos, and to force these institutions and schools into spending a lot of time and effort to anticipate what to do to avoid further legal backlash and cuts in funding.”

Eliminating the department entirely is likely to be a heavy lift because of opposition among Democrats — who appear to have enough votes to block such a move in the Senate. It’s also not clear that all congressional Republicans would go along.

Debate over dismantling the department

The environment for schools and colleges is risky and uncertain, said John B. King Jr., chancellor of the State University of New York and a U.S. secretary of Education under President Obama.

“We’re facing both threats — the threat of loss of funding for critical programs, and the threat of weaponization,” King said. “That weaponization is about bringing control — of what students do day-to-day in the classroom — to Washington.”

Mari Barke, a member of the Orange County Board of Education, said critics are being unnecessarily alarmist as it relates to school districts that serve students through high school.

“Sometimes I think less government is better,” Barke said. “If we could somehow eliminate some of the inefficiencies and waste, that might be a good thing.”

Trump has taken the position that he has full authority over the executive branch — including over funds appropriated by Congress. Using that legal premise, his Department of Education — in concert with Musk’s cost-cutting strike force — had already claimed more than $1 billion in savings from canceled education-related contracts and grants. Trump and Musk say they are targeting waste, fraud and abuse as well as seeking to eradicate left-wing ideology.

Denise Forte, president and chief executive of the Washington-based advocacy group EdTrust, said she has seen no evidence that waste and fraud have been uncovered.

Rather, she said, the new administration is hunting for key words or phrases such as “DEI” in program descriptions and websites and cutting programs that are flagged in that way without meaningful scrutiny.

“That’s not waste, fraud and abuse — that is about undermining our students,” Forte said.

Student loans, civil rights

Trump and his team have spoken of transferring major programs to other agencies rather than eliminating them.

The student loan programs for higher education could transfer to the Small Business Administration, the Department of the Treasury or the Department of Commerce. This move could disrupt services to 43 million students and borrowers who owe the government more than $1.5 trillion. About half of Cal State University students, for example, receive student loans, a portfolio of more than $1 billion.

Trump has already taken action on one sector of the student loans, signing an executive order changing the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program by disqualifying workers of nonprofit groups deemed to have engaged in “improper” activities, appearing to include organizations that support undocumented immigrants, or DEI programs.

The Pell Grant program, which awards more than $120 billion to 13 million students each year to help pay for higher education, could also be transferred. About $1.5 billion per year is set aside in Pell Grants for California students.

The Office for Civil Rights — charged with investigating and taking action to stop school-related discrimination — could shift to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Catherine Lhamon, who led the Biden and Obama administrations’ Office for Civil Rights, said she confirmed with staffers that regional offices in San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, New York and Philadelphia are closing. Offices in Seattle, Denver, Kansas City and Washington would remain open, she said.

The San Francisco office employed about 50 people who worked on California cases.

“The people in these offices are experts, some with decades of experience,” Lhamon said. “They evaluated complaints and jurisdiction, requested documents, reviewed documents, went to campuses, talked to students, talked to staff, interviewed witnesses about alleged facts, reviewed the law and determined whether a violation had occurred.”

She said the department already was understaffed, with about 12,000 pending cases when Trump took office.

Ken Marcus, who led the department’s civil rights office under President George W. Bush and during Trump’s first term, said that, with the staff reductions, “it will be important to see whether there will be increased hiring at the Justice Department’s civil rights division or other parts of the federal government.”

The impact on California

California receives an estimated $16.3 billion annually in federal funding, or about $2,750 per student. The Los Angeles Unified School District — the nation’s second-largest school system — puts its annual federal support at $1.26 billion.

Not all of these dollars funnel through the Department of Education. Significant federal funding for early childhood education comes from the Department of Health and Human Services, and the gigantic student meal program is housed in the Department of Agriculture. L.A. Unified alone estimates that it receives about $363 million to feed students from low-income families.

About 80% of L.A. Unified students qualify for Title I-funded services, which include tutoring, smaller classes, after-school programs, teacher training, counseling and family engagement. Another major funding area is for students with disabilities.

Billions in research funding flow each year to California universities from federal departments and agencies. A sizable portion comes from the National Institutes of Health — $2.6 billion alone for the University of California last academic year. Federal district judges have halted an attempt by the Trump administration to slash critical NIH grants while cases, including one filed by California, proceed.