The Trump Administration’s plans for sweeping cuts to curtail federal spending have put the U.S. Department of Education in the crosshairs.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he wants to eliminate the Education Department, and this week the administration started shutting down the department’s Institute of Education Sciences.

How much of an impact could a potential dissolution of the federal department have on public schools in Peoria County?

“The good news is your local school district will still have control of what is taught, how they teach it. So a lot of decisions are made at the local level,” said Regional Superintendent Beth Crider. “The difficulty comes in students that need extra support and extra help. So think about students with disabilities — that is supported from the federal level — students applying for financial aid at the secondary level when they go on to college.

“Then there’s lots of different funding mechanisms that support schools. So the best way to think about the U.S. Department of Education is it’s a support system for what goes on at the local level.”

Federal assistance

Crider said the Regional Office of Education receives some funding through several federal grants that could be at risk, although not all of them are through the Department of Education.

She said that while she appreciates a desire to streamline federal operations, cutting the Education Department can result in unintended consequences.

“There’s always places where we can be more efficient. Always. But my philosophy is that you can always be more efficient without harming families and children,” she said. “The hard part is, how do you get government to do that?

“We’re kind of caught between [when] maybe things weren’t ever changing, to now we’ve swung all the way to it’s very drastic, very dramatic, and all at once.”

Locally, Peoria Public Schools received $64 million, or about 23.4% of its overall revenue, from federal sources in fiscal year 2023. Dunlap District 323 depended on federal funds for about $3.3 million, or 6% of its budget, that same year.

Schools in Illinois could be affected by weakening Dept. of Eductation

Undoing?

The Department of Education was established by Congress in 1979 and operates on an annual budget of $79 billion. While Trump can attempt to cut the spending through executive orders, it would take an act of Congress to eliminate the department entirely.

Crider said the Regional Office of Education hasn’t yet taken any steps to prepare for whatever may happen with the federal Education Department.

“Things are changing so rapidly that we’re not sure what to prepare for,” she said. “People hear ‘frozen funding’ and think, ‘Well, that’s no big deal. That’s just being a more efficient government.’ That’s someone’s job. That’s someone that applied for it, sent in their resume, was hired to implement that service. Sometimes it’s multiple people.

“The grant that we have with the Department of Education, we’ve built out an entire tech hub for students to access apprenticeships and internships. What happens to that? Do we have to stop building it? We have to go back to the way we were doing it before, which was inefficient. So services stop and people lose their jobs.”

Crider said losing the DOE would also deprive school districts of valuable resource tools.

“One thing that we do utilize the Department of Education for is a database, and it’s a research base and all the best practices and quality things that should be done in our local public schools,” she said. “It’s also a place to go to (for) students with special needs or other unique situations in your school district. You can rely on the Department of Education to support that.”

Crider added that dialing back diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts is counterproductive and would leave some students behind.

“We add a ‘B’ in our office: Belonging. When you just say ‘DEI,’ it comes off as a thing. It is not a thing. It is diversity, it is equity, it is inclusion, and it’s about all children having a place in the public school system to belong, no matter how they show up,” she said.

“I think the best way I can frame this is that you have to be aware of what each child needs to be successful, and just because one child may need free lunch doesn’t mean that you’re taking something away from another child. It’s equal opportunity of access. Everyone deserves to have that opportunity.”

— This story published in partnership with WCBU, Peoria Public Radio