The Education Department will vacate its headquarter building : NPR
The U.S. Department of Energy is expected to move into the Education Department’s current headquarters later this year.
Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
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Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
In the Trump administration’s latest effort to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, it announced Thursday that all staff would vacate the department’s longtime Washington, D.C., headquarters in the Lyndon B. Johnson Building, which the administration estimates “is approximately 70 percent vacant.”
“Thanks to the hard work of so many people, we have made unprecedented progress in reducing the federal education footprint,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement announcing the move, “and now we are pleased to turn this building over to an agency that will benefit far more from its space than the Department of Education.”
This new agency will be the largest Department of Energy, currently housed in the James V. Forrestal Building, which the Trump administration says is “outdated” enough that the move will save taxpayers more than $350 million in “deferred maintenance costs,” according to a press release.
Department of Education staff will be moved to a smaller office about a block from its former headquarters, at 500 D Street SW, next August.
This decision was criticized by Democrats.
“Leaving Lyndon B. Johnson’s seat doesn’t shrink the bureaucracy — it reorganizes it,” said Rep. Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat and ranking member of the House Education Committee. “This decision to close the physical Department building is not just a symbolic decision: it reflects a broader effort to reduce the role of the federal government in ensuring that people have equal access to quality education.”
In an email to staff, obtained by NPR, McMahon called the move “a critical step in bringing education back to the states.” In just over a year, in keeping with President Trump’s pledge to completely eliminate the Department of Education, McMahon cut its workforce by nearly half, to 2,300 employees, and entered into 10 agreements to turn over the department’s work to other federal agencies.
The most recent of these deals, to transfer much of the management of the federal student loan program to the Treasury Department, has resurfaced McMahon’s biggest challenge in trying to help Trump fulfill his campaign promise: The Education Department was created by Congress in 1979, and only Congress can truly unwind it.
In response to a question from NPR about Treasury’s decision, a senior Department of Education official acknowledged that the Treasury Department cannot fully assume all of the Department of Education’s legal obligations regarding student loans. The official said the department would be disbanded to the extent permitted by law and that McMahon understands that “Congress is the only entity that can close the department.”
Leaving the Lyndon B. Johnson Building is loaded with symbolism. It was during Johnson’s tenure as president that the White House and Congress created some of the nation’s most important federal education policies, much of which focused on helping poor students.
