‘Betrayal of a sacred federal promise’

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U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, calls President Donald Trump’s order seeking to dismantle the U.S. Education Department a violation of the federal government’s trust and treaty obligations to tribes

A Democratic U.S. senator and a Native American education advocate said Thursday that President Donald Trump’s executive order calling for dismantling the U.S. Education Department could have disastrous impacts on Native students.

Trump signed the order Thursday, advancing a campaign promise to take apart an agency that’s been a longtime target of conservatives. He has derided the Education Department as wasteful and polluted by liberal ideology. However, completing its dismantling is most likely impossible without an act of Congress, which created the department in 1979. Republicans said they will introduce a bill to achieve that.

The department, however, is not set to close completely. The White House said the department will retain certain critical functions. Trump said his administration will close the department beyond its “core necessities," preserving its responsibilities for Title I funding for low-income schools, Pell grants and money for children with disabilities. The White House said earlier it would also continue to manage federal student loans.

The president blamed the department for America’s lagging academic performance and said states will do a better job.

“It’s doing us no good," he said at a White House ceremony.

However, U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawai‘i, vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, said Thursday that Trump’s order effectively violates the government’s federal trust and treaty responsibilities to tribes to provide education.

“The Department of Education plays a critical role in Native education, on everything from special education and Impact Aid to Native language revitalization,” he said in a news release. “Without a functional Department of Education, Native students – more than 90 percent of whom attend public schools – will be at the mercy of state governments that have no legal responsibility to meet their needs.”

Schatz called the order a “betrayal of a sacred federal promise.”

“This is a dark day for the millions of American children who depend on federal funding for a quality education, including those in poor and rural communities with parents who voted for Trump,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said.

Democrats said the order will be fought in the courts and in Congress, and they urged Republicans to join them in opposition. The department was “founded in part to guarantee the enforcement of students’ civil rights,” said Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. “Champions of public school segregation objected, and campaigned for a return to ‘states’ rights.’”

https://ictnews.org/news/betrayal-of-a- ... al-promise

“We have a duty to fight this reckless plan and protect Native students,” he said.

More than 92 percent of Native students attend public and charter K-12 schools, not Bureau of Indian Education schools, Schatz said.

Abolishing the Education Department would slash funding for Native students in public, charter and BIE schools, which rely on resources like Individuals with Disabilities Education Act special education services, Impact Aid, English Language Learner supports, and Every Student Succeeds Act Title VI Indian education programs.

“It would also mean less dedicated funding for teachers, sports, building repairs, school meal programs, transportation, and after-school tutoring/activities – leaving Native students with fewer educational opportunities,” Schatz said.

Already, the Trump administration has been gutting the agency. Its workforce is being slashed in half, and there have been deep cuts to the Office for Civil Rights.

Advocates for public schools said eliminating the department would leave children behind in an American education system that is fundamentally unequal.