\n<\/p>\n
The majority of staff in the education department handling special education has been laid off, according to multiple reports.<\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s total of 466 layoffs across the education department also impacted the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, which oversees programs that support millions of children and adults with disabilities nationwide, according to sources speaking to various outlets.<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite extensive efforts to minimize impact on employees and programs during the ongoing government shutdown, the continued lapse in funding has made it necessary to implement the RIF (reduction in force),\u201d according to a letter issued to workers that CNN reviewed.<\/p>\n
The Guardian has contacted the education department for comment.<\/p>\n
One department employee told NPR: \u201cThis is decimating the office responsible for safeguarding the rights of infants, toddlers, children and youth with disabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n
Sign up to This Week in Trumpland<\/span><\/p>\n A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Similarly, the National Association of State Directors of Special Education said that if the layoffs are true, \u201cthere is significant risk that not only will federal funding lapse, but children with disabilities will be deprived\u201d of free and proper education, K-12 Dive reports.<\/p>\n Chad Rummel, executive director of the Council for Exceptional Children, told the outlet: \u201cThe rumored near elimination of the Office for Special Education Programs is absolutely devastating to the education of people with disabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEliminating federal capacity to support Idea is harmful to people with disabilities, their families, and the professionals who serve them, and it runs counter to everything our members work toward every day,\u201d Rummel added, referring to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act which ensures a free and appropriate public education to eligible children with disabilities throughout the country.<\/p>\n In March, the education department announced layoffs of 1,300 employees, or nearly 50% of the department\u2019s workforce, which the education secretary Linda McMahon described as a \u201csignificant step toward restoring the greatness of the United States education system\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The majority of staff in the education department handling special education has been laid off, according to multiple reports. Friday\u2019s total of 466 layoffs across the education department also impacted the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, which oversees programs that support millions of children and adults with disabilities nationwide, according to sources speaking<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[794,200,496,13242,1604,293,1017,2161,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-27847","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-administration","9":"tag-department","10":"tag-education","11":"tag-laid","12":"tag-majority","13":"tag-report","14":"tag-special","15":"tag-staff","16":"tag-trump"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}