How Donald Trump's election might impact local education
On Tuesday, Nov. 5, we had our general elections.
In North Carolina, Democrats pretty much swept all the more important statewide positions (Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, and a plethora of others), but North Carolina and quite a few other states, went for Donald Trump in the presidential voting.
There are an infinite number of words I could write about the causes and effects of Donald Trump’s second presidential victory, but most relevant to Freedom High School, and many of its students, is education.
While the states are primarily entrusted with the education of their citizens, there are quite a few levers that could be pulled by the Federal government. What are those levers, how will they impact students like me, and how likely are they to be pulled?
Before we start, we’re going to act like everything that Donald Trump has said on the campaign trail, whether by him directly or by campaign officials, is true, and that he will do what he has said he will do.
We’ll start from the top. A conservative talking point for a while has been the Department of Education.
The Department of Education is one of the most recently-created cabinet positions, but over its short lifespan, it has attracted much controversy, even though its budget is one of the smallest and it has the fewest number of employees.
Donald Trump has promised to eliminate the Department of Education which is impossible. With Trump, it seems like nothing is impossible, but really, it is impossible to eliminate the Department of Education.
The Department manages all of the Title I programs (schools like Freedom), hands out Pell Grants, regulates student loan relief, researches everything education, regulates sports at all levels of schooling, protects students against discrimination, and much more.
Even if the Department of Education were to be shut down, its functions would have to be continued by other departments, which would take a ridiculously large amount of time and money.
On a scale of one to 10, with one being that Donald Trump would have to shatter American Democracy to complete this task and 10 being that Donald Trump could do this with an offhand comment to a staffer, destroying the Department of Education is a three.
DEI and Critical Race Theory are two oft-misunderstood concepts, but they are very popular to speak out against on the campaign trail.
Trump has pledged to “cut federal funding for any school or program pushing Critical Race Theory or gender ideology on our children.” This one is harder to gauge.
If the Trump administration really wanted to, I am sure they could find a way to penalize K-12 schools or higher education institutions for having DEI offices or teaching CRT, but it would take some work.
This is a four on the scale, just because it is so hard to pin down DEI or CRT as ideas within education. I think the Trump administration will absolutely have a go, but there just are not that many ways for him to exercise influence.
Transgender students have been in the spotlight for a while now. Then-Gov. Pat McCrory’s bathroom bill, all the way back in 2016, was basically the starting pistol for this issue in North Carolina, and transgender students are very much still controversial in politics.
The most direct way Trump could wield influence over trans students is through Title IX. Title IX prohibits sex-based discrimination in education, and Biden expanded this to include transgender students.
Donald Trump could sign a document on Day One that reverses this. While he might face a few lawsuits from more liberal states, this is a nine on the “how easy is this for him” scale.
Trump has also promised to implement a “parental bill of rights.” In particular, Trump wants to implement the direct election of school principals by parents.
This is highly unpopular (was on the ballot in two Trump states but was widely voted against), and also extremely hard to implement at the federal level.
Trump would probably get sued even by some Republican states for overreach if he tried to implement this in every school district across the country. Making every school’s principal get elected by parents is about a 1.5.
Those are most of the actions being tossed around in terms of education. As you can probably tell, there is not just a ton of stuff Donald Trump can do from his Presidential perch.
However, I told many, many people that Donald Trump was not going to win in 2024, swore up and down that he would not, so I should probably just stop trying to predict anything about him.
Henry Beall is a columnist for The Paper. He is a senior at Freedom High School.
