Is eliminating the Department of Education a good idea? One former South Florida superintendent weighs in. NBC6’s Ari Odzer reports
Public schools in Florida are funded primarily by our local tax dollars, but they also get a big boost from Washington, primarily from the Department of Education.
President-elect Donald Trump has promised to eliminate it.
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“And one of the other things I’ll be doing very early in the administration is closing up the Department of Education in Washington, DC,” Trump said recently.
Is that a good idea? I posed the question to Dr. Peter Licata, the former superintendent of Broward County Public Schools.
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“If you’re asking me for my perspective as an educator, I would be very cautious about that,” Licata said. “When you look at all these student loan programs and you look at all these federal programs, I don’t know if we could exist without it.”
Licata did say the department could use some reforms.
“I do see there’s a potential opportunity to flip the table a little bit and reorganize that department, but they do a lot for local education, especially children in need of special programming,” Licata said.
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Last year, Broward County and Miami-Dade County Public Schools received about $1 billion, combined, from the federal government, much of it for students with disabilities and for disadvantaged schools in the Title 1 program.
The money flows from Washington to Tallahassee and then to our local school districts, funding everything from school lunches to programs helping disabled kids, teacher training, academic support, and English language instruction for immigrant kids. The Department of Education manages most of it.
Trump has nominated former wrestling executive Linda McMahon as Secretary of Education. The current secretary, Miguel Cardona, recently posted on X, “If you support eliminating the Department of Education, you do not support our students. Period.”
Licata says there’s room for both oversight of the DOE and of how states spend the federal dollars.
“I also know that from that big of a viewpoint, 10,000 feet up in Washington, it’s hard to recognize what individual states need, so I think there’s a chance to look at it and say, states, here’s the money, but here’s what we need you to do with it,” Licata said.
Licata went on to say there’s broad agreement among the nation’s superintendents that they need more, not less federal dollars to effectively reach the students who need special attention, and whatever happens to the Department of Education, he says the money it manages is essential.
