What Happens If The U.S. Department Of Education Closes? A Parent Breaks Down The Linda McMahon Impeachment Fight
Last Tuesday, I was hunched over my kitchen table helping my 4th grader wade through long division, half a bowl of cheddar Goldfish gone stale between us, when my phone pinged with a group text from my kid’s PTA. “Did anyone see the news? Democrats are moving to impeach McMahon because she’s actually trying to shut down the Education Department. What does that even mean for our kids?”
I’m a former 3rd grade teacher turned stay-at-home parent, so most texts in the group end up redirected to me when someone needs context. I sighed, typed “Give me 20 minutes, let me get through this math homework first” and set my phone down. When I finally got my kid off to play outside with his neighbor, I poured a lukewarm cup of coffee and pulled up the article.
It’s not just a crazy DC rumor, turns out. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has pushed for closing the department for years, and now Democrats say she’s actively working to dismantle it from the inside out—freezing hiring for key enforcement roles, dragging feet on funding renewals, intentionally ignoring existing civil rights rules—all with “willful intent” to make the department nonfunctional so it can be shut down entirely. Hence the impeachment push.
When I saw that, my first thought was of the year I was still teaching 3rd grade at a Title I school outside Cleveland. Our state budget had just been cut by 10% across the board, and the school board was getting ready to lay off our reading specialist. Sixty percent of our kids were reading below grade level, and that specialist was the only one pulling small groups for 30 minutes a day to get them caught up. Our principal applied for a $50k Title I grant through the U.S. Department of Education, and we got it. That grant kept the reading specialist on staff for three more years. By the time I left that school, the percentage of kids reading at grade level had jumped 28%.
That’s the part most political coverage misses, right? This isn’t just a fight over big government vs. small government. It’s a fight over the small, daily things that happen in your kid’s classroom that you probably don’t even notice.
My sister has a 7-year-old son with autism, and last year her local school district tried to cut his 1:1 aide that he needs to participate in general education classes. They said they couldn’t afford the position in their budget. My sister appealed to the district, got turned down, and ended up filing a complaint with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. Within three months, the department forced the district to reverse the cut. If the department closes, there’s no neutral higher body to appeal to. Most states don’t have the funding or the mandate to enforce those kinds of civil rights protections for disabled students. If your local district doesn’t want to pay for the support your kid needs, you’re out of luck.
I’ve seen a lot of takes online saying closing the department would cut red tape and give more power to local districts. I get that frustration. When I was teaching, I spent an entire three-day weekend every year filling out federal reporting forms that felt repetitive and unnecessary. But the red tape is what comes with the protections and the funding. Most public school districts get 8 to 15% of their annual budget from the Department of Education. If that funding goes away, it’s not like states or local districts can just make up that gap. Most states are already running tight education budgets, and property taxes (the main source of local funding) can only go up so much before people push back. That means cuts to classroom staff, after-school programs, free and reduced lunch, classroom supplies.
So what can you actually do about this, as a parent or caregiver? It feels like DC impeachment drama is so far removed from our daily lives that we can’t do anything, but that’s not true. There are three small, concrete things I’ve done in the last two weeks that take less than 10 minutes total, and anyone can do them.
First, pull up your local school district’s website and search for “annual budget federal funding.” It takes two minutes to find. Most districts post this publicly, and you can see exactly how much money they get from the U.S. Department of Education, and what it pays for. I did this for my kid’s district last week, and found out 12% of their budget is federal funding, most of it goes to special education and free lunch. That’s information you can’t unsee, and it makes the fight feel real, not just abstract.
Second, if your kid receives any federally supported service—special education, free or reduced lunch, tutoring at a Title I school—send a one-sentence email to your U.S. Representative and both of your senators. You don’t need to write a long essay. Just say “I’m a constituent and a parent of a kid in public school, and I oppose any effort to eliminate or defund the U.S. Department of Education. Please vote against any proposals that would advance this goal.” That’s it. Congressional offices count every email they get from constituents, and even a short one makes a difference.
Third, the next time you go to a parent-teacher conference or a PTA meeting, just ask your kid’s teacher what program at the school relies on federal funding. Most teachers will tell you straight. When I asked my son’s 4th grade teacher last week, she told me the 150 new books in her classroom library came from a federal literacy grant. If that grant goes away, she’ll have to buy those books herself, like she did 10 years ago before the grant existed.
I don’t know how the impeachment fight will go. Most impeachment attempts against cabinet members don’t go anywhere, and even if it does, it’s not clear that will stop McMahon’s effort to dismantle the department. There’s a lot that’s still up in the air. Last night, my kid brought me the graphic novel he checked out from his teacher’s library, the one about a kid who goes to space camp. He sat on my couch and read the whole thing out loud to our dog, and I kept thinking how many of those small, good moments in school are tied to funding and protections that come from that department in DC that most of us don’t think about twice. It’s easy to write this off as just another political fight. But for millions of kids, it’s not. It’s their reading specialist, their aide, their free lunch, their classroom books. And that matters enough to pay attention.
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