In Focus SoCal: Federal education cuts

Since President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March to dismantle the Department of Education, many groups have filed lawsuits against the administration.

In the latest case, public officials in 17 states, including California and the District of Columbia, sued the administration to restore access to pandemic relief aid for schools.

On this week’s “In Focus SoCal,” Senator Sasha Renée Pérez, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, sits down with host Tanya McRae to discuss the latest surrounding the dismantling of the Education Department and cuts to federal funding.

“When we cut staff from these major departments, that means that we are slowing down funds that these school districts receive,” said Pérez. “That means that there’s less staff available to respond to questions that school districts, that students, that parents may have, and all of that is incredibly concerning.”

Senator Pérez also shared her thoughts about how the Trump administration is threatening to cut funding to California’s K-12 schools if the state doesn’t comply with a federal order to certify that all school districts have ended their DEI programs.

The Education Department said that DEI programs are a form of race-based discrimination and violate civil rights laws, while the California Department of Education defended the legality of DEI efforts in a letter to school superintendents.

California’s K-12 schools received nearly $11 billion from the federal government last year.

“It is absolutely something that we’re monitoring very closely, but I also want to be incredibly clear here. The accusations that are being made, which is that the state of California is discriminating against students, is completely and 100% false,” said Pérez. “Prop 209 has been in effect for several years now and so these accusations that there is some sort of race-based discrimination happening, that DEI programs are discriminatory, is completely false.”

On the higher education level, the federal government is freezing more than $2.2 billion dollars in grants and $60 million dollars in contracts to Harvard after the university defied demands to limit activism on campus.

The Department of Justice is conducting compliance review investigations into admissions policies at several California universities as well.

CalMatter’s Mikhail Zinshteyn also joins “In Focus SoCal” to discuss these investigations, as well as cuts to research grants by the National Institutes of Science.

“This is research into vaccines. This is research into HIV. So it’s been a shock to the research environment and a shock to science,” said Zinshteyn.

Send us your thoughts to InFocusSoCal@charter.com and watch at 11 a.m. on Saturdays and 9 a.m. on Sundays.