State Superintendent, school advocacy group, and constitutional expert weigh in on Education EO
PHOENIX (AZFamily)—On Thursday, President Trump signed an executive order directing the secretary of education to take all necessary steps to close down the Department of Education.
“We are going to be very simply returning education back to the States—where it belongs,” President Trump said Thursday.
As President Trump works to fulfill his campaign promise to dismantle the US Department of Education, constitutional law experts like Robert McWhirter expect this order to be immediately challenged in court.
“The recent order to gut the department of education is simply illegal. A president does not have the power to end an agency or a department,” says McWhirter.
Regarding government agencies, McWhirter said a sitting president has little power to interfere with them.
“In fact, the president under article 2 of the constitution has the duty to faithfully execute the laws that Congress passes,” said McWhirter, “If you want to take the Department of Education, all the president’s powers in education are actually kind of on loan from the congress of the United States of America. So, congress is the only one that could actually end an agency and stop an agency.”
This order directs the secretary of education to begin the shutting down process.
One of the department’s main jobs is monitoring how federal dollars are spent in public schools.
They ensure funding supports low-income areas and students with disabilities.
Arizona’s Family spoke with the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Horne, about the recent executive order. Horne supports the president’s move and spoke about how he would use that funding.
“We would use it for basically the same purposes. The different groups like Title 1 and Special Ed. The other titles and for leadership training and so on, they’re used to what they’re getting,” said Horne, “I believe there might be money saved on the federal bureaucracy and that I would use to raise any extra money I got, I would use to raise teacher salaries.”
The public school’s advocacy group, Save Our Schools Arizona, does not agree with the president’s move to get rid of the Department of Education, releasing this statement:
Another job the Department of Education does is investigate discrimination in schools and college campuses; Horne said this is something the state already does. “We do it now but there’s somebody to oversee the person who’s overseeing it’s, it’s duplicative. It’s not necessary, and some of their (The U.S Department of Education) decisions are irrational,” said Horne.
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