Trump Administration Accelerates Education Department Breakup by Shifting School Safety and Funding Oversight

The Trump administration is moving school safety and foreign funding oversight out of the Education Department as part of a broader plan to dismantle the agency.

By: AXL Media

Published: Feb 24, 2026, 5:13 AM EST

Source: Information for this report was sourced from Politico

Decentralizing the Federal Education Bureaucracy

The Trump administration has taken another definitive step toward its goal of dissolving the Education Department by reassigning several of its core responsibilities to other cabinet level agencies. Education Secretary Linda McMahon characterized the move as a practical step toward returning educational control to individual states and increasing federal efficiency. The realignment focuses on two major areas: the management of school safety and mental health initiatives, and the oversight of foreign financial influence in American higher education.

Despite bipartisan pushback from Congress, the administration is proceeding with a strategy that effectively bypasses legislative disapproval of a total department shutdown. By creating new partnerships with Health and Human Services (HHS) and the State Department, the White House is hollowing out the Education Department’s portfolio, shifting hundreds of millions of dollars in grant administration to agencies the President deems better equipped for specific enforcement and crisis response.

RFK Jr. Takes Command of School Safety

One of the most significant shifts involves the Department of Health and Human Services, led by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. His agency’s Administration for Children and Families will now manage hundreds of millions of dollars previously dedicated to school safety and mental health. This includes grant programs established by Congress following the 2022 Uvalde, Texas, elementary school massacre, which aim to increase the number of mental health providers in schools and assist communities in recovering from traumatic violence.

HHS will also absorb Project SERV, a program providing short term recovery services for K 12 and higher education institutions after violent events. Secretary Kennedy emphasized that his agency’s decades of experience in disaster response make it the ideal home for school safety initiatives. Additionally, HHS will take over community school programs and the 30 million dollar "Ready to Learn" initiative, which supports educational video programming for young children through public telecommunications.