To the editor:

Those on the stage in the White House these days seem to think they can make things up to push their agenda. As a former public school student and teacher I am compelled to correct some of the blatant disinformation. The Department of Education does not choose your kids curriculum, write text books, invent common core, or control what your school teaches. Those things are determined through state and local control.

Trump’s executive order to abolish the Department of Education walks away from students, schools and communities. Minnesota’s public E-12 schools depend on more than $500 million a year in federal education funding. Special Needs children are particularly vulnerable. This cut is not a cost saving measure when it harms our children. In the long run it will lead to privatization of our schools and the option to exclude students if they don’t fit a private schools “profile”. Congress and the public needs to stand up and say no to the reckless abandoning of Public Education and the children served.

It is not about “shrinking government”. It is about stealing from essential services to give more tax breaks to billionaires. The Department of Education protects marginalized kids, enforces civil rights, sends money to underfunded schools and holds people accountable. It will hurt disabled students, low-income schools, rural districts with no tax base, immigrant kids and English learners.

Getting rid of the Department of Education is a race to the bottom that will shrink equity and opportunity. Some say it will let kids fall through the cracks. In reality it will push kids through the cracks.

Lori Fisher Dyce

Ghent