WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WISH) — Secretary of Education Linda McMahon on Wednesday said plans to gut her department won’t harm students who need civil rights representation.

McMahon’s comments came two days after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s order that blocked a plan to fire roughly 1,400 people from the U.S. Department of Education. President Donald Trump has vowed to shut down the department for good during his term, a longtime Republican goal, and the plan would effectively cripple the agency.

“The federal government will continue to provide the kind of funding that is already appropriated by Congress under Title I, the (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act),” McMahon said. “What the president, what the federal government wants to do, is get out of the way. Remove a lot of the regulation. Let’s put more money into the states that’s now spent on bureaucracy.”

McMahon met Wednesday morning with Gov. Mike Braun, Indiana Secretary of Education Dr. Katie Jenner, and education leaders from around the state on the Purdue University campus. She said Indiana’s expansion of school choice vouchers and new emphasis on apprenticeships, typified by the planned Employment Honors Plus diploma seal, is exactly the formula Trump is seeking for schools across the country. McMahon also praised Purdue’s decision not to increase in-state tuition for the past 14 years, calling it “absolutely remarkable.”

Rep. Chris Campbell, a Democrat who represents West Lafayette in the Indiana General Assembly, said both funding and the Department of Education itself have allowed the federal government to enforce equal educational opportunity over the past few decades. As for Indiana’s approach to education, she said the expansion of school vouchers has benefited a few wealthy Hoosiers while draining funding away from traditional public schools. She said she fears the Braun and Trump administrations’ emphasis on apprenticeships could limit students’ future employment opportunities down the road.

“We also have to think about the future, five, 10, 20 years down the line, when maybe these manufacturing jobs aren’t there anymore and they’ve been pigeonholed into a skill that is obsolete,” Campbell said.” “So, we need to keep our option open for what’s necessary, not only for today, but for tomorrow.”

McMahon said the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, as well as civil rights offices in other government agencies, can take over handling civil rights complaints from minority or special-needs students if her department is dismantled. In addition, she said Title I funding and other federal aid was being distributed to the states well before her department was established. The Department of Education was created in 1979, but was preceded by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, which was established in 1953.

The Trump administration has frozen about $6.7 billion in supplemental K-12 education funding that was supposed to be distributed on July 1. That money includes grants for before and after-school programs, STEM courses, and education for children of migrant workers.

According to an analysis by Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chair Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., Indiana, was supposed to receive about $107 million from that sum. McMahon told News 8 the programs funded by those dollars are under review and she can’t comment further until that review is completed.

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