HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WHNT) — President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to close the U.S. Department of Education, and Sen. Tommy Tuberville said he strongly supports the president’s plan.
Tuberville said he wants to hand power back to the states.
“We need to take a sledgehammer to it,” Tuberville said. “The states can handle their kids and their curriculum a lot better than Washington D.C.”
Tuberville said the state of education in the U.S. has gotten worse since the involvement of the federal government.
“It goes back to people. It goes back to the unions, the teacher’s unions that have really, really hurt what’s going on in the Department of Education and our education system,” Tuberville said. “Not just elementary, not just secondary, but also higher educations. We’ve lost sight of what’s important and if we don’t have well-educated kids, we’re not going to have a great future for this country.”
The U.S. Department of Education is responsible for distributing funding to the states, and those numbers go up during national emergencies like the pandemic. In 2023, the Department of Education handed over more than two and a half billion dollars of school relief funding to the State of Alabama, as a part of the American Rescue Plan.
With federal approval, the state then takes that money and decides how it should be spent.
The Department of Education also works to ensure that all students, including those with learning disabilities, have equal access to the resources they need to learn. Part of its job is providing funding for special education programs and developing federal policy that protects the students in those programs.
A vote to dismantle the Department of Education would likely go through the Senate and require a supermajority of 60 votes to pass. Republicans will hold 53 seats in the Senate.
