Education Secretary Linda McMahon speaks to reporters after President Trump signs an executive order ending the Department of Education.
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00:00Good evening, good evening. It's nice to see all of you today on this beautiful, glorious sunny
00:07evening in Washington, D.C. with the thunder and lightning rolling around us.
00:31Yeah,
00:32well, certainly the executive order did not specify what happens with any of
00:36the departments within education. So we're looking at where best those
00:41most departments could be located. I mean, the Department of Justice already
00:45has a civil rights office, and I think that there is an opportunity to discuss
00:50Attorney General Bondi about locating some of our civil rights work there. Do
00:56you have a comment on the lawsuit being filed by Randy Weingarten? This is the
01:00person who said that she'll only care about students once they start paying
01:03union dues. Does she have any standing in the administration? Well, I've not
01:07had any conversation yet with Randy Weingarten. I know about last week,
01:11about a week ago, her comment was the president wanted to take education away
01:15from Children, which clearly is not the case. He wants to improve education for
01:19Children. He wants to get those dollars even more dollars back to the states
01:23without the bureaucracy of Washington. So that's our plan. That's our goal.
01:27I'd be glad to meet with her and talk to her about that.
01:29Madam Secretary, can you talk about what will happen to some of the employees
01:34who are part of the D. O. E. As you shrink the department, ultimately
01:39looking to close the department, what will happen to these employees and
01:43discuss, you know, what the next plan will be for all these employees? Well,
01:48thank you so much for asking that, because last week we had, um, we did
01:53terminate almost half of the Department of Education. We did it thoughtfully
01:59way. Look to see where duplication was in the departments. We wanted to make
02:04sure that we were just cutting fat from the bureaucracy, the inward facing
02:09things, not the outward facing servicing that we do to to students
02:13into states. So we did it very carefully. We wanted to make sure that
02:16we complied by the law. But they had those that were terminated will get
02:22three months of full pay and benefits. And after that, under, you know, the
02:28rules of civil service, they also will get severance package, which is very
02:34much more generous than it would be in the private sector. And then also
02:38there's a accrued sick leave and unused leave that they will also get paid for.
02:43So, you know, you'd like to provide a soft and off ramp as you can, because
02:48after all, it's not easy, and I've done it in the private sector, too. It's
02:52really not easy to terminate people.
02:55Secretary Trump wants to send education back to the states. Education
02:59originally, but it begins in the home with the nuclear family and the nuclear
03:03family in this country has been decimated. We got a fatherless crisis
03:05going on in this country. Far too many kids are growing up without a father
03:09and all the statistics show that kids that grow up with a father in the home
03:12do far better in education. So I think if we can shrink down nuclear families
03:16again in this country, that would really help the Department of Education or
03:19the education in this country. Well, unfortunately, I can't do anything
03:24about reestablishing the nuclear family. I would hope that we would see
03:28more of that happen because statistics really do support exactly what you've
03:32said. Nuclear families are key, and when you have parental involvement in
03:36children's education and how they're growing up, we see those results in a
03:40lot of charter schools around the country actually invite parents to come
03:44in, and they some of them actually require parents to sign a contract that
03:48they're going to support their students when they get home. So the more parent
03:51involvement we can have, the better it is for Children for many of the things
03:55that they're doing, not just education.
03:59I just spoke with one of the governors who is at the signing of the executive
04:02order.
04:04Like to see the money that's coming into the states from the deal.
04:12Well, first of all, you said the D. O. E. Uh, that could be interpreted to be
04:15the Department of Energy. So we're the Department of Education, and I
04:21think always governors would always like to see funding without any strings
04:26attached. But that is the goal of the president, too, is to have a few strings
04:30and regulation is possible right now for about every dollar of funding that
04:35goes into the states. One statistic is shared with me is that 47 cents is
04:41spent in regulatory compliance. The president would clearly like to see that
04:46money being used to educate our students, and that's the goal.
04:51Sorry.