Laid-off Education Department workers say fight not over
By: Zachary Schermele
USA Today
WASHINGTON - These days, it seems all Beth Gellman-Beer does is wait.
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First, she waited to see whether President Donald Trump would follow through on his promise to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. She's worked there for nearly two decades, helping prevent students from experiencing the bullying she faced growing up with disabilities.
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Then, in March, [2025] she and more than 1,300 of her coworkers were laid off, and she waited to see if a court would interview. By May, [2025] a federal judge in Boston had reinstated her position and those of many of her colleagues.
..... Now, she's in limbo again. On July 14, [2025] the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to carry on with its massive Education Department layoffs while a lawsuit proceeds. an exception temporary shielded her job.
.... In the days following the order, Gellman-Beer and other fired workers have expressed disappointment with the decision, through most weren't surprised by it.
..... A "never-ending unknown" was a phase she sued. "Roller coaster of emotions" was another.
..... "We just need to move to the next phase of our careers and our lives,: Gellman-Beer said.
..... They warned that the consequences some schools and students are already suffering after the layoffs may worsen. Key information that teachers rely on to make decisions has already been jeopardized. College financial aid could face more disruptions. And it's not clear the department has the staffing it needs to smoothly implement the education provisos of Trump's major tax and spending law.
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Regardless of those concerns, the president was jubilant about the ruling. In a social media post, he celebrated it as a "major victory."
..... "The Federal Government has been running Education System into the ground," he wrote. "But we are going to turn it all around by giving the Power back to the PEOPLE."
..... The politics and logistics of shuttering the Education Department are complicated.
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Education Secretary Linda McMahon has acknowledged she would need congressional approval, and therefore help from Democrats, to do it. Still she's testing the boundaries. The day after the Supreme Court order, she announced a partnership that allows the federal Labor Department to assist with a small number of the Education Department's responsibility.
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Despite Trump's insistence that the agency must close, he just gave it a load of new responsibilities. His tax and spending law creates several new student loan payment programs, as well as a novel accountability system for colleges.
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To enforce the law, the Education Department is going to need many of the same types of people it just got rid of, said Robert Jason Cottrell, who was a data coordinator in the Office of Post-secondary Education.
..... "My biggest fear is that they're going to try and contract this stuff out to get it done," he said. "I don't know if that's going to work."
..... Rachel Gittleman, who was also fired from the department in March, [2025] worries the most about how student loan borrowers are being impacted. She used to work in the Federal Student Aid Office, the branch of the agency that oversees the Unities States' nearly $2 trillion student loan portfolio.