The Education Department said Thursday it would move out of its headquarters in downtown Washington, D.C., the latest and most visible step in the Trump administration’s campaign to eliminate the agency altogether.
The department said it will leave its Lyndon B. Johnson headquarters and turn the space over to the Energy Department.
“We have made unprecedented progress in reducing the federal education footprint, and now we are pleased to give this building to an agency that will benefit far more from its space than the Department of Education,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement.
The Education Department was created by Congress in 1979, a spin-off from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Congressional action would be needed to close it, and the administration does not have sufficient support in the Senate, where 60 yes votes would be required.
Absent that permission, President Donald Trump’s administration has acted on its own to dismantle the agency. It reduced staff by about half through layoffs and incentives to quit or retire, though some of those jobs were restored. It also has entered into a series of interagency agreements that turned the operation of many of its programs over to other federal agencies. Those changes include offices that administer $28 billion in grants to K-12 schools and $3.1 billion for programs that help students finish college.
“Once again, the Trump administration is taking a strong step to reduce bureaucratic bloat and act as a responsible steward of taxpayer dollars,” said House Education Committee Chairman Tim Walberg (R-Michigan). “President Trump and Secretary McMahon have been committed to right-sizing the Department so our education system serves students, not bureaucrats.”
Earlier this month, the department struck an agreement to have the Treasury Department collect on defaulted student loans, taking the first significant step to unwind the office of Federal Student Aid, the largest office in the agency. Treasury will eventually assist in administering the federal student aid form and recouping student loans in good standing — core functions of the Education Department’s student aid office.
Moving federal student loans to Treasury is an idea that has enjoyed bipartisan support since the Obama administration, but some liberal lawmakers worry that a wholesale transfer of student aid operations could lead to confusion that will harm the most vulnerable students.
With Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, lawmakers have done little if anything to stop the dismantling efforts, even as Democrats and public education advocates have decried them.
“Instead of actually helping students, Trump and his billionaire Secretary of Education are lighting millions of taxpayer dollars on fire with these stunts,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington). “How about instead of abolishing the Department of Education, we just make sure kids can read at grade level?”
The LBJ building, as it’s known, was one of 15 new office buildings in a 1956 plan for an expansion of federal government facilities in Washington, a physical symbol of the growing federal role that liberals cheered and conservatives have tried for years to erase. The building is just off the National Mall, located at 400 Maryland Avenue SW.
Administrations have at times used the building to make political points. During the George W. Bush administration, entrances to the building were adorned with red school houses with the words of his signature law, “No Child Left Behind.” This year, the Trump administration hung a large banner celebrating slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk on the building, including him among “heroes in American education.”
The severe cuts to the Education Department staff were part of a broader and drastic staff reduction driven by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency in the early months of the Trump administration. The department said Thursday that the building was 70 percent vacant and that moving the agency out of the building would save about $4.8 million per year. Remaining staff will move to 500 D St. SW, with a target relocation date of August.
The Energy Department’s existing James V. Forrestal building is outdated, the administration said. Allowing Energy to assume the lease for the Education Department space will save money in deferred maintenance costs, it said.
Trump campaigned on a promise to close the Education Department, saying it was an example of liberal federal bureaucracy that had pushed a woke agenda on American schools and failed in its mission to boost test scores. Trump and McMahon cast shuttering the agency as a way of “returning education to the states,” though in practice they are trying to move federal functions to other federal agencies, not to state or local governments.
And even as the agency has talked of a lighter federal footprint, under Trump and McMahon it also has used its authority in new and unprecedented ways, pressuring school districts and colleges to fall in line with administration interpretation of civil rights law regarding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and transgender student access to bathrooms and sports teams.
Rachel Gittleman, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents Education Department workers, said Thursday that her union will continue to push back against the dismantling of the department.
“After more than a year of fighting back against this unlawful and unprecedented gutting of a Congressionally created agency, we know that the will of the people, congressional intent, and the law is on our side,” she said.
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