Department of Education: What's going to happen?

Attorneys on the Deemar case target District 65 .. again

I’ve been avoiding writing about this subject, because I don’t want to give publicity to these folks, but the cat is out of the bag now. Let’s talk about the Trump Administration’s plan to terminate the Department of Education and what that means for Evanston or school districts in Illinois, more generally.

Their plan is out in the open - laid out in Project 2025, and more recently in op-eds by influential right wing writers;

• How to Dismantle the Department of Education (Chris Rufo)

• Betsy DeVos: Shut Down the Department of Education (Free Press by Betsy Devos)

The plan is the following (their language, not mine):

• Spin off college student loans and grants to Treasury: Create an independent entity to manage the $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio and $110 billion in annual student aid.

• Block-grant K-12 funding to states: Work with Congress to distribute the department's $100 billion annual K-12 funding directly to states based on population.

• Shut down centers of “ideological production”: Terminate pretty much everything else, including firing all federal staffers. Transfer core civil rights functions to the Department of Justice for oversight.

The latter point is primarily referring to the Department’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR). To that end, the OCR issued a letter last week to all State Boards of Education. The letter is authored by Craig Trainor¹, former head counsel for Republican House Member Jim Jordan. You can read the letter here.

The letter extends the definition of discrimination to include “DEI Programs”;

Other programs discriminate in less direct, but equally insidious, ways. DEI programs, for example, frequently preference certain racial groups and teach students that certain racial groups bear unique moral burdens that others do not. Such programs stigmatize students who belong to particular racial groups based on crude racial stereotypes. Consequently, they deny students the ability to participate fully in the life of a school.

The letter then suggests that in order to receive federal funding, states must audit compliance immediately,

The Department intends to take appropriate measures to assess compliance with the applicable statutes and regulations based on the understanding embodied in this letter beginning no later than 14 days from today’s date, including anti-discrimination requirements that are a condition of receiving federal funding.

It ends by reminding the State that in order to receive this federal funding, they must functionally pass this audit;

Institutions that fail to comply with federal civil rights law may, consistent with applicable law, face potential loss of federal funding.

So much for those block grants and state’s rights!

Nowhere does the Administration define exactly what “DEI Programs” means. Does it include professional development for teachers, such as the Beyond Diversity / Courageous Conversations program? Does it include the District’s BLM equity week? What about the LGBT or Latinx equity week? What about programs like Books and Breakfast? Does any program which makes Black kids feel good about themselves violate this letter?

It sure seems like it.

Again, read their definition:

DEI programs, for example, frequently preference certain racial groups and teach students that certain racial groups bear unique moral burdens that others do not.

It certainly seems like the strategy is:

1. Terminate the Department of Education, make promises about “block grants” and returning power to the States and;

2. Revoke the grants unless education programs meet their specific ideological demands. They’ve been holding the 1776 Project ready for this moment.

And again, before you comment and say I’m being dramatic and this is just bloviating, I think they mean it for real this time. The prior Trump administration didn’t figure out the Department of Education OCR office existed until the very end, in 2021 (see below). And before you say, “this is all illegal and the courts will stop it” - let me remind you what Trump tweeted yesterday:

I don’t think they’re screwing around this time - ask anyone who works at USAID.

Southeastern Law Foundation Targets D65

Speaking of laws, the Southeastern Law Foundation (SLF) has launched a campaign to take on District 65 again. This is the conservative Georgia-based law firm that represented District 65 teacher Stacy Deemar in her failed case against District 65. The SLF writes in their press release;

This decision found that the school district—an arm of the government—was deliberately using skin color and ethnicity as bright line factors for separating and segregating students and teachers. However, for reasons that remain unexplained, just days after taking office the Biden Administration suspended the complaint (put it “on ice”), which allowed blatant segregation and discrimination to continue and worsen. Now, nearly every lesson in every grade reflects critical race theory and rejects colorblindness.

They are appealing to the Department of Education to re-instate the case.

The SLF is correct that the Biden Administration suspended the complaint under unexplained circumstances. You can read the original undated and unsigned letter of finding, which was authored by the Trump Administration in January 2021. I’ve written about this a few times:

• The Department of Education's "Letter of Finding" and SCOTUS (June 2023)

• District 65's Civil Rights Complaints (March 2024)

I even FOIA’ed the Department of Education, which took more than a year to get back to me with mostly redacted documents. The letter of finding suggests that from 2017-2019 the District’s professional development programs (mostly the Beyond Diversity/Courageous Conversations Programs) violated the law. The letter is unsigned and undated.

After Biden took office, the case went “poof” and disappeared from the OCR’s website without any formal conclusion that I am aware of.²

I’m curious to see how this goes, but I find it hard to believe that the OCR, now run by Jim Jordan’s former attorney, is going to reject this appeal. And if so, this is a very broad definition of discrimination that includes professional development: 0 students take the Beyond Diversity training or participate in the affinity groups - it is solely staffers and in 2019 it was an optional program (which is fundamentally why Deemar lost her case).³

It sure seems like the intent here is: if a white person employed in education has their feelings hurt by anything, it seems sufficient for a complaint, resulting in the potential loss of federal funding for homeless and special education students.⁴ For District 65, that’s about 6% of the annual budget, which is why I included this question on my questionnaire for Board members;

(5) Equity: President Trump has indicated that local governments which prioritize DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) subjects or LGBT students will lose federal funding. These topics are a part of District 65’s mission, however federal money amounts to about $9-10 million/year in revenue (6% of the budget). You may likely be in the position of having to pick between continuing these programs (example) or sacrificing federal revenue, most of which goes towards low-income and special education students. Are you willing to cut ties with the Federal Government in order to save programs such as the BLM curriculum, support for trans youth, or diversity training? If so, how do you mitigate the impact on low-income or special education students?

I think my question is even more salient now than it was two weeks ago.

I really believe there may come a moment in the next year where we, as a community, have to pick between the federal money and even the most modest equity-centered programming or professional development. The Administration is telling us this is exactly the choice they intend us to make.

1. Note: He deleted this link almost immediately after I posted this story. It is a 404 now.

2. I am extraordinary disappointed with the Biden Administration for many reasons but not properly resolving cases and protecting Districts like D65 is a huge “own goal”. It was very clear what the strategy was going to be in the next Republican administration and now they’re doing exactly what they said.

3. I am unsure if this is true at the high school or not. I’m speaking solely about D65 here.

4. I think often of when I toured the Hermitage in Nashville, the estate of Andrew Jackson. On the tour in 2018, they rebranded slaves as “community members” and said truly insane things like Jackson’s wife would often work in the fields with the slaves (yeah right!). The older white folks I was on the tour with (including an older woman from Evanston!) were absolutely giddy at this depiction. It’s not a crazy leap to imagine accurate depictions of slavery making some bonehead white people feel bad, resulting in a complaint to the OCR and loss of federal funding.