“Today’s reduction in force reflects the Dept. of Education’s commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers,” said Secretary of Education Linda McMahon the day the reductions were announced. “I appreciate the work of the dedicated public servants and their contributions to the Department. This is a significant step toward restoring the greatness of the United States education system.”
A press release from the U.S. Dept. of Education says impacted employees will receive pay and benefits until June 9 as well as severance based on service.
A later executive ordered signed by Trump orders McMahon to dismantle as much of the department as she legally can.
Leiher said she believes that the U.S. government runs on a nonpartisan civil service. For example, she said she believes the mission of the Dept. of Education is to protect the civil rights of students, to ensure borrowers have access to financial aid, and to collect statistics on educational data.
“I feel if you make that partisan, and you make that political, that can prevent (the department) from transitioning and serving the American people year over year,” Leiher said.
She said in her opinion, it’s wasteful to have an argument about how to spend American tax dollars in an agency every four years.
Leiher said with the cuts to entire offices she knows were made at the department, she doesn’t know how they can serve the American people.
She applied to the U.S. Dept. of Education as an entry level analyst after the COVID-19 pandemic quarantine cut short her Peace Corps mission in March 2020.
Leiher said she and her coworkers didn’t know the cuts were happening. Instead, they were told the building they worked in would be closed for a security incident and everyone needed to be out at 6 p.m. that night.
Then news broke that around 50% of the department was going to be cut. Later, she found out via email her entire organizational unit was cut.
“It’s pretty devastating because I loved my job,” Leiher said. “I really believed in what my role was and I loved my coworkers. Everyone was extremely hardworking and amazing at their job.”
She said it was especially hurtful to hear rhetoric about people being cut who were bad at her job. She said her performance reviews were great and so were the coworkers who were let go.
Leiher described her role as helping other departments be better at theirs. She worked in the Dept. of the Chief Data Officer and helped other offices do data analytics projects and was the co-lead for the department’s data literacy program.
She said she was working on some artificial intelligence tools that were expected to eventually be for the public to access.
The day she and her coworkers were terminated, Leiher said she was launching a program to help other mid-career data scientists.
“I was helping them be better at their job and be more efficient and maybe look at something a different way,” she said. “And then they were able to make an impact on the American people through their grant programs.”
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