Road trips have become synonymous with turning points in Jane Hodgdon’s life.
As a teacher in Colorado in the 1990s, she swore she would never go back to the East Coast, where she grew up, and work for the federal government, even as she often worked weekends and summers in local restaurants to make ends meet.
But in 1999, she set out on a road trip with her then-husband to visit a handful of graduate programs she was considering. That trip ended in her home state of Maryland, where she had planned to stay for a while.
Hodgdon and her husband decided to split, and when he returned to Colorado, Hodgdon realized she really needed money. So, after talking with a friend who worked in the federal government, she accepted a job at the U.S. Department of Education that she had vowed just weeks earlier she’d never take.
She spent the next two decades and change there, working with recipients of department grants that, among other things, helped schools provide more support to students and become community service hubs where entire families could access child care, health care, housing, and more.
“Fate always has her way,” Hodgdon said.
Just shy of 25 years later, this spring, she found herself on another life-changing road trip.
This time, it started because of loss, not opportunity, as President Donald Trump made good on a promise to shrink the Education Department.
Hodgdon took an early retirement offer in early March to avoid what felt like an inevitable termination—by mid-March, the department had shed half its staff. She said she made the decision to ensure she and her two sons, one in college and one a junior in high school, could maintain health care coverage. She’s among about 2,000 people who were employed by the federal agency when Trump took office and are no longer working there.
When she left, she was working on the Full-Service Community Schools Program, a $150 million grant program that helps schools—particularly those where high percentages of students in poverty—become those service hubs for students, their families, and community members.
It was a blow for Hodgdon, 52, and the end of her tenure came abruptly, severing her ties with educators and community members from across the country she had worked with since the start of the 2000s.
But suddenly, Hodgdon had an abundance of time and an enduring connection to those she had supported in her work.
She was already planning on a trip to Colorado for her niece’s high school graduation in May. So, instead of flying, Hodgdon loaded up her 7-year-old bernedoodle, Maxine, into her Subaru station wagon, made some phone calls to line up visits to programs she had worked with, and hit the road.
“Our ability to communicate with anybody beyond the Department of Education staff was cut off so abruptly, and it felt like I needed—I wanted—more closure,” Hodgdon said.
Proposed cuts threaten the programs Hodgdon worked on
Hodgdon’s route spanned just under 6,000 miles and took her from Atlanta—where she visited a Full-Service Community Schools grantee—to Tulsa, Okla., where she visited an arm of the Promise Neighborhoods program that she had worked with from afar for more than a decade. Albuquerque, N.M., Skokie, Ill., and Simpsonville, Ky., were also on her itinerary.
At each stop, Hodgdon spent a day with people running programs that support the nation’s neediest children. She listened to their stories and, more often than not, their concerns about the programs’ sustainability as Trump’s proposed budget cuts threaten their viability.
Trump is proposing $12 billion in cuts to the U.S. Department of Education budget for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1. The proposal includes consolidating 18 grant programs into a “K-12 Simplified Funding Program” with $4.5 billion less than is currently provided collectively and eliminating other K-12 programs.
Congress might not accept every element of the budget proposal, but if it became law as is, some programs Hodgdon worked on in her time at the Education Department would cease to exist.
While at the federal agency, she spent:
- a decade working with Safe Schools/Healthy Students, an interagency grant program that sought to reduce school violence by providing students with wrap-around supports;
- five years working with Promise Neighborhoods, a grant program that provides students in distressed communities year-round academic support and involves community partners to bolster their access to other services, like health care;
- four years with the Promise Zones Initiative, a government-wide initiative to revitalize selected areas, and Statewide Family Engagement Centers, a competitive grant program;
- two years working on COVID relief efforts; and, finally,
- three years with the Full-Service Community Schools Program, which had grown during the Biden administration.
“It makes me proud that I have operated in a way to build so much trust with these people in these communities that they invite me in, share their work with me, they value my opinion and insights, and are willing to share the challenges they’re experiencing,” Hodgdon said. “It’s rewarding, but it’s also bittersweet because we see all of these proposals to really cut or eliminate a lot of this work, and folks are scared. I saw that across the board.”
Trump’s budget proposes the elimination of the Full-Service Community Schools Program, and to roll the Promise Neighborhoods and Statewide Family Engagement Centers into the K-12 Simplified Funding Program.
Despite it all, Hodgdon isn’t bitter about how her Education Department tenure ended.
“I remain so grateful for the 25 years that I spent at the Department of Education, the work that I was able to do, the communities that I was able to work with,” she said. “The people I’ve gotten to know are just tremendous, and I’ll always carry that with me.”
Hodgdon wanted to be present and intentional at her visits
Hodgdon went into each visit with the intent of “bearing witness” to the work of educators and others. Site visits were scaled back during her time at the Education Department, she said, so she often didn’t get an on-the-ground look at the successes and challenges of the programs she worked with.
In some cities, she was a “fly on the wall,” sitting in on meetings where school leaders pored over data from a schoolwide survey or attending local government town halls where residents advocated for education funding. In some, her visit was the main event, complete with itineraries and tours.
Some of her friends and colleagues encouraged her to share more of her insights on social media or to take more photos and videos.
But Hodgdon wanted to be present and authentic. The trip was as much for the people she visited as it was for her—an opportunity to show that, no matter what, somebody cared about their experiences, concerns, wins, and struggles.
“I was really grounded in what I was doing and why, and I think there’s a risk of, if I were trying to make this into something really social media-heavy, that could have unintentionally shifted my purpose,” Hodgdon said. “I might be thinking about things with a slightly different lens, and I didn’t want that.”
The trip ‘reinvigorated’ Hodgdon
One day, somewhere between Tulsa and Albuquerque, Hodgdon was staring down at her atlas, looking for a place to stop. She needed Wi-Fi and some privacy.
“I love a map,” Hodgdon said.
As she scanned it, she brushed her finger along that day’s route until she found a small town just big enough to have a public library where she could camp out for an hour.
That’s where Hodgdon logged onto Zoom and interviewed for the job she would just a few days later be offered and accept.
The road trip—originally intended as a postmortem of her federal career—had instead reinvigorated her and inspired her to continue working to support schools. Her new role is with the organization Partners for Rural Impact, which works in rural areas across the country, partnering with schools to increase students’ access to high-quality services such as mental health care, preschool, and other support to help them succeed.
“What it actually has done is really reinforced my commitment to this work—where we’re thinking about schools and communities and the families that make up those schools—and that all of our progress is going to be done in community and in connection with one another. I am reinvigorated and I’m just more committed than ever to this work.”
The end of a road trip, but a new beginning
On June 12, after 31 days on the road, Hodgdon walked into her home in Ellicott City, Md.
While Maxine got readjusted, Hodgdon dropped her bags and sifted through the keepsakes folks had given her along the way—water bottles, buttons, T-shirts, magnets—all commemorating what she called the “trip of a lifetime.”
She wasn’t home for long before she set out on another adventure.
On June 16, Hodgdon started her new role at Partners for Rural Impact. The organization is based in Berea, Ky., but Hodgdon will work remotely with frequent visits to the Bluegrass State.
She traveled to Kentucky for her first few days to get her bearings and meet her new colleagues.
This time, she took a flight.
