The uncertain future of Guam education

 How will the local agency manage its operations when the federal government cuts the cord?

By Jayvee Vallejera

On March 21, President Donald Trump ordered the abolition of the U.S. Department of Education, but its impact on local settings remains largely unknown.

The idea is to decentralize education and allow each state and territory to handle its individual needs. They may set their own education agenda and localize their policies without being tied to federal guidelines. But the picture remains abstract.

How will it be done? How much will it cost?  What’s the next step? School administrators and local educators are still in the dark.

Even reaching out to U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon for answers won’t help. McMahon told local educators that federal officials are still “figuring it out.”

“We need to get concrete answers from Washington, D.C. and figure out how we're going to tailor our operation,” said Dr. Kenneth Erik Swanson, superintendent of the Guam Department of Education.

During the signing of the executive order more than a month ago, Trump said, “My administration will take all lawful steps to shut down the department. We’re going to shut it down—and shut it down as quickly as possible. It’s doing us no good.”

Yet the timeline for the USDOE shutdown has yet to be announced. “We don’t have that information. They don’t know. All they’re doing right now is pulling back money where they can and laying people off,” Swanson said.

He believes the Trump administration has no plan other than what is in Project 2025, a political game plan to reshape the federal government in favor of right-wing policies. Swanson said the White House is following the script set in Chapter 11 of Project 2025, which relates to the USDOE shutdown. “But they don't understand the mechanics of it, that's for sure,” he said.

One of the USDOE’s main functions is to distribute federal education grants, including the Pell Grant, Title 1 and the Special Education grant. Trump has stripped the USDOE of that role and passed its grantor authority to other agencies. This is where Swanson sees the biggest impact on Guam education: securing federal grants will mean submitting multiple applications to different agencies, which could lead to confusion.  

That’s what Guam Del. James Moylan wants to avoid. He said the transition

must be smooth and that Guam's unique needs must be considered and addressed. "As I’ve said before, one-size-fits-all policies do not work for our island. We must ensure that our students continue to receive the resources they need to succeed," Moylan said in a statement.

This all boils down to funding, he said. Unlike large states, Guam is unable to absorb increased education costs. “Our uniqueness is a great challenge,” Moylan said.

In a statement on March 20, McMahon stressed that education is fundamentally a state responsibility. Decentralizing education, she added, is a significant step forward to give parents and states control over their children’s education.

“Teachers will be unshackled from burdensome regulations and paperwork, empowering them to get back to teaching basic subjects,” McMahon said. “Instead of filtering resources through layers of federal red tape, we will empower states to take charge and advocate for and implement what is best for students, families and educators in their communities.”

The abolition of the education department is part of the Trump administration’s massive federal spending cuts. “Taxpayers will no longer be burdened with tens of billions of dollars of waste on progressive social experiments and obsolete programs,” McMahon said. “K-12 and college students will be relieved of the drudgery caused by administrative burdens—and positioned to achieve success in a future career they love.” 

With the job of doling out education funds being farmed out to different agencies, it becomes confusing to determine the sources of federal grants, Swanson said. For one, the job of allocating federal funds to Special Education might go to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “but that hasn't been decided yet.”

He said the GDOE has been assured it will keep its Title 1 grant money, which will evolve into a block grant. “But what’s the mechanism?” he asked. Title 1 funds, which supplement local funding, go to school districts with large numbers of low-income students to help them meet state education standards.

Swanson said Trump has reportedly decided to remove the funding for the Head Start program, which for Guam would mean losing $20 million. “So that's a huge impact for us,” he added.

If that happens, the Guam legislature will have to find a way to fund the program. “Right now, that's not in the budget,” Swanson added.

At this point, Swanson doesn’t have a quick answer when asked if the Guam government and the GDOE are ready if Trump’s plan pushes through. “We don't really know yet because we don't know what's going to be cut out,” he said. “We don't know the scope of the changes.”

Kenneth Erik Swanson

He pointed out that Guam is a small territory and a billion-dollar state budget is a lot of money. “So when you take money out in multiples of $10 million, it has a huge impact.”

He acknowledges that the Guam economy is not as robust as it has been in the past, so the ability of the Guam legislature to appropriate funds to the GDOE is limited. His office is looking at an increase in the GDOE’s budget submission for fiscal year 2026—from $297 million to $306 million. But the legislature’s finance committee already advised Swanson not to get his hopes up; the agency’s budget might be capped at $275 million. “So we'll have to figure out what we could cut,” he said.

The local education agency’s management of federal funds has recently come under scrutiny. According to the Office of Public Accountability’s latest audit, the Guam DOE used pandemic funds to cover regular salaries and some of the 14-point requirements of the Adequate Education Law, which were beyond the federal grants' intended purposes.

The OPA said that, of the $124 million in ARP funds the GDOE has already spent, the largest expenditures included $60 million for regular salaries and $6 million for contractual expenses. (The USDOE had awarded the GDOE a total of $111 million in Education Stabilization Fund under the CARES Act and a total of $287 million in ARP funds.)

Swanson said he has been assured that the GDOE will keep its Consolidated Grant because it’s in the current federal budget. He has also been told that Special Education funding would be sustained. “We're told it might transfer to [DHHS] for administration once the Department of Education is dismantled,” he added.

The same holds true for the school lunch program funds from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. GDOE will receive the same amount, but Swanson is wary.

“My experience has been— just in the last month—that things change overnight in Washington. Literally, someone can change their mind and we're wiped out,” he added. “You cannot rely on the federal government. You cannot believe anything coming out of Washington until it happens.”

Swanson said GDOE’s supplemental programs such as tutoring, after-school classes, online courses and enrichment activities, will be funded for another year—if its Consolidated Grant funding stays at the same level. “Beyond that, we don't know,” he added.

With so much uncertainty and some of federal funds suspended, this has already resulted in the GDOE having to stop work on several big projects: the refurbishment of 12 schools, the FB Leon Guerrero Middle School renovation, the purchase of fire suppression systems and an air-conditioning project.

If that money is not restored, he said GDOE, the legislature and the governor's office will have to find the money to close out those projects and pay the contractors. “That's a big problem. We don't know what to do yet because we don't have an answer,” he added.

Swanson concedes that the USDOE needs to be reduced. But eliminated? No. He pointed out that the people who understand education must be the ones working on trimming the USDOE—not ones who have no background. This ham-handed approach to taking the functions of the USDOE, breaking them up and giving them to other agencies in the government only makes some bureaucracies smaller and the others bigger, he said. “It doesn't really change anything at the end of the day, and probably just has a more confusing outcome,” he added.

Moylan, a member of the House Armed Services Committee and the House Education and Workforce Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, said the USDOE abolition would mean more responsibilities for states and territories, and Guam needs to be ready and able to take on that assignment.

It’s not necessarily the end for the USDOE. Legal scholars argue that it is a federal agency and dissolving it will require an act of Congress. Also, several lawsuits have been filed to stop Trump’s executive order.

The USDOE has about 4,400 employees. Nearly 1,300 employees have already been let go as of March 11.

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