RICHMOND, Va. — About two dozen people took part in a walk-in outside River City Middle School in Richmond on Wednesday to protest the Trump administration's cuts to the U.S. Department of Education.
The Trump administration has announced it planned to cut nearly 50% of the department's staff, with the eventual goal of completely shutting down the Education Department.
At her confirmation hearing earlier this year, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said she intended to make the Education Department "operate more efficiently."
Richmond Education Association (REA) members, along with some local officials and parents, rallied outside several Richmond schools on Wednesday in a show of support for teachers and school leaders.
"We already know what cuts to education look like. They look like larger classroom sizes, less support, less trained teachers, [just] bodies in a room. We already have a teacher shortage," Grace Gentry, with the REA, said.
President Trump has said the Department of Education is too big and wasteful.
"[The] Department of Education, maybe more so than any other place, has a lot of people that can be cut," Trump said. "Number one, they're not showing up to work. Number two, they're not doing a good job."
A spokesperson for the Virginia Council, who supports the Trump administration's efforts to cut government spending, said they cared deeply for children but called it a flagrant disregard for the future if the U.S. was not careful with tax money, adding that money poured into education has not produced results.
"I think we do need to look at some bloat," Gentry said at Wednesday's rally. "I think we need to look at bloat where it is, though it's not in the classroom. We're picking pencils up off the floor, you know, so that our students have supplies."
A group of 20 Democratic state attorneys general has filed a lawsuit intended to stop President Trump from dismantling the Department of Education.
The attorneys general argue that dismantling the Department of Education would disproportionately affect low-income students and students with disabilities.
They say that the Department of Education helps provide states and local school districts with much-needed funding.
"This administration may claim to be stopping waste and fraud, but it is clear that their only mission is to take away the necessary services, resources, and funding that students and their families need,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James. “Firing half of the Department of Education’s workforce will hurt students throughout New York and the nation."
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