When President Trump signed the expected executive order to shut down the Department of Education, “Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities,” lawsuits from teachers unions, public school districts, and others followed to challenge the illegal attempt to shut down the department without an act of Congress.

But the unions that filed those suits and the lawyers representing them are not the only ones speaking out and fighting the proposed cuts and changes. This week, youth advocacy group Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT) held a press conference with local legislators, a member of a Texas district’s board of trustees, and the president of Texas American Federation of Teachers to spotlight the impact on students in Texas and across the country and demand action to protect public education.
 

Ayaan Moledina, SEAT federal policy director and Texas high school sophomore, begins press conference in response to President Trump's actions against the Department of Education

“We are here today to stand firm against President Donald Trump's attacks on public education, including the attempted dismantling of the United States Department of Education,” said Ayaan Moledina, SEAT federal policy director and a high school sophomore in Austin, TX. “SEAT has worked extensively with the department, including the Office for Civil Rights, OCR, on addressing civil rights violations in our own school districts. From combating book bans and challenging policies that attack LGBTQ+ students to investigating districts putting less funds into predominantly minority schools compared to predominantly white schools, the Department and OCR have played an important role in the fight for equal and equitable public education. Unlike what the Trump administration seems to be implying, the president does not have the unilateral power to abolish a cabinet department, and we must uphold the Constitution, even if some would rather see it fade away.”

The administration has begun dismantling the agency with mass layoffs and by assigning its long-held responsibilities to other departments. The day after the press conference at which President Trump signed the executive order while surrounded by children at desks, he announced that the Small Business Administration would take control of the government’s student loan program and that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as director of the Department of Health and Human Services, would now handle “special needs and all of the nutrition programs and everything else.”

Moledina addressed those changes.

“Transferring these programs over to other federal and state departments would weaken [them] and potentially lead to efforts to dismantle them altogether,” Moledina said. “Dismantling the department will lead to major consequences on the success of marginalized students. Without a federal department, there will be no federal oversight of institutions to guarantee the basic and fundamental rights of students. There will be no federal assistance for institutions to implement federally mandated programs, putting more of a burden on schools that already have their plates full. We must keep fighting and showing lawmakers at all levels of government that education, being the great equalizer, will not be torn down to benefit the rich and powerful.”
 

High school senior Eliza Hebert calls the moves against public education "selfish, unintelligent, and abhorrent."

After a string of state legislators spoke, another student—Eliza Hebert, organizer with SEAT and senior at Westwood High School in Austin, TX—talked about the widespread impact and domino effect of these decisions that goes beyond test scores.

“The reality of an education system without a Department of Education to disperse funds doesn't just look like poor educational outcomes,” said Hebert. “It looks like hunger and sickness and books so old that they are illegible, and it looks like a growing divide between the children of the wealthy and the children of hard working tax paying Americans that have relied on the now broken promise that the government is supposed to make life better.”

The press conference ended with a call to action from Hebert.

“I implore all of us today in this room to think of the children and young Americans who will be impacted by this action,” Hebert said. “Chances are it isn't you, it isn't me, it isn't any of us here. It is the rural and underprivileged and middle-class students who benefit from quality public education the most, because it gives them a chance to succeed, a chance to dream. This action leads the children of America down a dark, dangerous, and destructive pathway that isn't of their own design. As a student and as a human, I will not stand for it, and I encourage all of us here today to stand in strong opposition of it.”