Arizona lawmakers at odds over impact of US Department of Education dismantling

PHOENIX — The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) is taking steps towards closure, and that puts more responsibility on Arizona’s education system.

The department is shifting certain programs, like Title I and English language funding, to other federal departments and transferring others to the states directly.

Democratic state Sen. Flavio Bravo, a member of the Senate Education Committee, does not agree with the Trump administration’s decision to shut down the DOE. He said it could negatively impact programs like university loans and free school lunches.

“The importance of having a federal Department of Education is because education is the great equalizer amongst our country with vastly different resources in different regions … to lay them off, that means other areas of government will have to expand and grow and have to address those issues,” Bravo said. “So, in an odd way, by trying to decrease government, you’re actually expanding it.”

Republican state Sen. Tim Dunn, who is also on the Senate Education Committee, disagrees with Bravo about the overall closure plans. He said this allows Arizona to empower school boards and create more specialized programs in the state.

“The reason for doing that is you have these agencies that specialize in some of these functions already, as opposed to recreating that in the Department of Education, who might not have the expertise,” he said.

Dunn added that he believes the Trump administration’s intent is to better serve education on a state level, while Bravo said that federal workers only make up 4% of the federal budget, so moving these programs won’t save a significant amount of money in the long term.

“As a state senator on the education committee and having been born and raised in Phoenix, we’ve long had our challenges at the state level … I hold great respect for our state Department of Education, but I still think we do need a federal Department of Education. It’s not dismantled yet,” Bravo said.

The Democratic lawmaker said that for a state like Arizona, which is constantly ranked low for education nationwide, this could complicate matters further.

Concerns over impact of Dept. of Education closure on special needs programs

Part of the dismantling of the DOE will include states taking control of their special needs programs. However, both senators are concerned about that due to the amount of work special needs programs require.

Additionally, Dunn said the state will need to figure out the details and prepare to take on the extra work.

“We want to make sure we don’t impact the special needs functions … so I think if we can streamline that … we’d be able to get more per student capacity,” he said.

Both senators also agreed that if the state becomes responsible for more funding, there would have to be a plan that fairly allocates the money between major metro areas like Phoenix and more rural areas of the state. Dunn added that the most important thing is getting students to succeed.

Funding for this journalism is made possible by the Arizona Local News Foundation.

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