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The potential impact of President Trump’s and billionaire Elon Musk’s plan to carry through on massive cuts to the U.S. Department of Education has reached a boiling point in Connecticut.
During one of U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro’s recent virtual town halls, the congresswoman from New Haven, who also represents parts of Fairfield County, had some strong words for the Trump administration regarding the planned cuts, especially those under Title I. Those are the programs designated for low-income students and families.
“There are 580 Title I eligible schools in Connecticut,” DeLauro said during the Feb. 27 town hall. “And all of them are facing uncertainty in their budgets. They also canceled over $1 billion in research funding. They cut over $600 million in grants to prepare our teachers to be able to teach in schools that have high needs.”
She went on to criticize the work of Musk, owner of Tesla, SpaceX, and the social media platform X. After announcing $101 million would be slashed from 29 DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) training grants, DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) announced on X that that Musk’s team terminated 89 contracts worth a total of $881 million the next day.
“Meanwhile, we have an unelected, unchecked billionaire – Elon Musk – who is running roughshod unilaterally,” she added. “He has no authority, my friends. He’s canceling contracts and he’s canceling funding.”
She said the end goal of the “attacks” is simple: “They want to eliminate the Department of Education. And before that they are trying to weaken it through extreme and illegal tactics.”
As part of his education policy, Trump has vowed to eliminate the Department of Education, which was put in place by an act of Congress. To start the ball rolling the Trump administration has targeted education grants and Title I funding as being among the first cuts. He has even jokingly said the job of education secretary Linda McMahon of Connecticut is to see to it she has no job by dismantling the department.
“We receive over $320 million in title funding for students for disabilities,” said Fran Rabinowitz, the executive director of the Connecticut Association of School Superintendents. “To give you a sampling of what would happen if we didn’t receive that funding. It would cripple us in Connecticut. It will impact our urban communities more. But it will certainly also impact our suburban districts as well.
“In New Haven, if Title I were taken there would be over 100 positions that would go away. Those are teachers and paraprofessionals. There would be no support for behavior, for intervention with reading. In Branford, you would have math interventionalists that would go away. You would have special education teachers that would be gone. We can ill afford that.”
According to DeLauro, the impact of the $330 billion in cuts and eliminations proposed by the Republicans in the Congress in the recently approved budget resolution would:
- Take 72,000 teachers out of classrooms
- Eliminate services for 5.5 million English learners
- Slash the federal work study program in half (there are 330,000 students who need to finance their college education)
- Take away needs-based financial aid for almost 900,000 kids nationwide
- Eliminate youth employment opportunities
- Slash the adult employment opportunities for more than 250,000 adults
Those cuts would affect the more than 1,000 K-12 schools and 530,000 students in Connecticut, DeLauro said.
Comments from the public
In a radio talk show format, DeLauro and Rabinowitz heard from state residents and teachers.
Donna from Branford was one of the first to call in.
“I’m a paraprofessional in my hometown in the middle school, and I am very concerned with these cuts,” she said. “How are these going to affect our most vulnerable kids and how are we going to keep funding our paraprofessionals?”
DeRosa responded with anecdote about a recent hearing on Capitol Hill.
“There was a hearing yesterday about education,” the congresswoman said. “The chair of that committee is from Alabama. The whole point was to say we should not be investing any more dollars in education because our kids can’t read, they can’t compute, they can’t do any of these things. They are going directly for our paraprofessionals. They view as what you do as waste and fraud and abuse.”
Rabinowitz defended the work of paraprofessionals.
“I just co-chaired a special education taskforce. Frankly, we spent a great deal of time on how we attract paraprofessionals, how we assure you have a living wage, how do we make sure you have health benefits because you are so important to the education of our children.”
Brenda from East Haven questioned the legality of Musk’s actions.
“The entire issue – the Department of Education being huge among them – is that Musk in an unconstitutionally action is just defunding the government essentially for his own personal benefit of Trump and his oligarch friends,” she said. “How can we as a blue state band together with other blue states, whether it’s withholding federal taxes, to really abort this unconstitutional conduct?”
DeRosa responded by complimenting the actions of state Attorney General William Tong.
“Our attorney general has been forthright,” DeRosa said. “He brought one of those first suits with 22 states when they issued that memo to cut programs across the boards. It was very successful. The courts are one avenue.”
