The Education Department, in the latest step of the Trump administration’s plan to dismantle the agency, has begun transferring its employees to other federal agencies.

The department said Tuesday that it signed six new interagency agreements to transfer some of its programs and employees to the departments of Labor, Interior, State and Health and Human Services, in order “to break up the federal education bureaucracy.”

Education Secretary Linda McMahon told employees in an all-hands meeting that the department is soft-launching plans to reassign its work to other parts of the federal government, before calling on Congress to permanently shutter the agency.

McMahon, in a transcript obtained by Federal News Network, told employees that Education is currently transferring its employees out to other agencies “on a temporary basis.”

That temporary reorganization, she said, will give the Education Department a proof-of-concept to show lawmakers. At that point, the Trump administration will call on Congress to pass legislation that will officially shut down the department and codify the reorganization.

The department, she added, has already transferred 13 employees to the Labor Department, “so that we can be more efficient and economical,” and that more interagency agreements will soon be signed to transfer other staff.

McMahon said the Education Department’s budget still covers those 13 detailed employees, and that the Education and Labor Departments are currently “co-managing” them.

McMahon told employees that she has spoken to members of Congress about this reorganization plan, and is planning to move programs out of the Education Department “on a temporary basis” for now. But in the end, she said the Trump administration’s goal is to find enough votes in Congress “to close the Department of Education.”

“If it has worked, and we have proven that this is the best way to do it, then we’ll ask Congress to codify this and make it a permanent move out of the Department of Education into whatever agency that program has gone into,” McMahon told employees.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March, calling for the dismantling of the Education Department. McMahon told lawmakers during her confirmation hearing that the Education Department is set up by Congress, and “it clearly cannot be shut down without it.”

The department, so far this year, has lost about half of its employees through mass layoffs and voluntary separation incentives.

McMahon didn’t mention immediate layoffs or workforce reductions as part of this phase of the reorganization plans, but acknowledged shutdown-era layoffs could return in early 2026.

McMahon said the Education Department has cancelled reduction-in-force notices it sent to about 20% of its remaining workforce during the 43-day government shutdown.

The continuing resolution passed by Congress and signed by Trump put those RIF notices on hold at least through Jan. 30, 2026.

But beyond that point, McMahon acknowledged that RIFs may return.

“Moving forward, that creates unrest. It creates uncertainty for all of you, and I understand that,” she told employees. “I know how difficult it is to make decisions that, from my perspective, are going to affect people’s lives and their livelihood and their teams and what they’re working on. And it is not an easy decision.”

McMahon said a majority of the public didn’t support plans to close the Education Department, when the Trump administration first announced its plans. However, she said the majority of the public does support shifting these programs to other agencies to make them more efficient.

“When the goal will be to have congressional votes to close the Department of Education, we are not closing education. We’re lifting education up, and each of us in this room has a chance to be part of history, and that this is part of our legacy,” she said.

The six interagency agreements will move billions of dollars in grant programs to other agencies. The Labor Department, in particular, will oversee much of the federal funding that will go to K-12 schools, including grants for schools serving low-income communities.

The department says states and schools shouldn’t expect any disruptions to their funding, except that federal funds will now come from the Labor Department.

“The funding will not change. That may flow through a different account or a different building,” McMahon told employees.

The reorganization would move two of the Education Department’s largest programs, the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education and Office of Postsecondary Education, to the Labor Department.

However, the Education Department will still retain student loan oversight and accreditation of colleges to ensure they are eligible to receive students’ federal financial aid.

Critics of the reorganization say that the agencies taking on Education programs and personnel don’t have expertise in these policy areas, and that the transfer could disrupt some of its essential programs.

“That national mission is weakened when its core functions are scattered across other federal or state agencies that are not equipped or positioned to provide the same support and services as ED staff,” AFGE Local 252 President Rachel Gittleman said.

The Associated Press contributed to this story

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Interview transcript: 

Eric White Let’s start from the FAR overhaul perspective. They were able to get that out right before the shutdown occurred. I wanted to see what your initial thoughts were and what you’re hearing from industry folks who are going to have to comply with these new rules.

Emily Murphy So it’s really interesting, very last minute, obviously they got everything out, they wanted to meet that deadline. And I’ve got to commend the folks at OFPP, GSA, NASA, DoD, who all got that out and they worked really hard to get that out so that it would be out there before, frankly, many of them ended up getting furloughed. They got Part 15 out, Part 16 out, so they’ve got a lot of stuff out at the very last minute, and there’s a lot there to still digest. Part 16, which is type of contracts, was really interesting because it created BPAs against GWACs, which was something we haven’t seen before. Lots of sections came out with even just PDFs, and they’ve now been updated to include the actual downloadable, the actual text. But there was a lot there. One thing that contractors should be paying attention to right now is that even though these have all gone out, if you go to the Revolutionary Far Overhaul site, you’ll see that not all of them have been adopted at every agency. And so that’s something that you should be very, very aware of, depending on where they’re contracting. So, some of the deviations have only been adopted by two, three agencies. Others have more than 30 agencies that have adopted them. But when you consider how many agencies there are, that still isn’t a very large number, and so it becomes a question of, are the agencies considering these to be just adopted by, in absence of them taking any action, is it that they are still thinking through the deviations, they need to do some additional modifications to a deviation they would be doing, because these were model deviations, they were not agency-specific deviations. And then, this was the FAR Council putting these out with the intention of doing it as a deviation that agencies could adopt and start implementing right away as they started an official rule making process. And the expectation was that official rule making would start sometime mid-November. Now, I don’t know if that’s gotten slowed down by the shutdown or not. But it raises a lot of questions. You still can go on to the acquisition.gov website and give informal comments. And I would suggest anyone who’s thinking of doing so do that, but then start coming up with what they want their real comments, their official comments to be on those rules. What did the FAR Council get right? And then, where are there areas that need changes, that need some adjustments? And I trace it with both, because frequently, at least back in the days when I was actually working on the FAR Council stuff in the Bush administration, we would frequently get comments back from people only about what they disliked. They wouldn’t tell us what was good. And when you don’t tell agencies what is good, they may actually get rid of what it was that you liked in the FAR changes because they’re not hearing people step up and say, that was a good change, that’s going to make things better, please keep that. If all they hear from is people saying we don’t like anything, you never know what’s going to then survive that comment period. So it’s very important to comment, not just on what you think needs to be changed, but also on what needs to be retained.

Eric White I think any Amazon reviewer will cite the same experience if they have that. They only tell me what they don’t like. They titled it the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul. Is that, I want to get your opinion, is that an inappropriate title? Is this really revolutionary or is this a bit of labeling that we’ve seen from the Trump administration in the past?

Emily Murphy I’m not sure that they could be truly and utterly revolutionary in terms, because there were statutory constraints, but they did about everything they could within that statutory framework. They got rid of a third of the clauses that affect commercial contracting. They got rid of the reps and certs, lots of them, and it’s going to be much easier to register as a federal contractor going forward. The commercial type contracting, they broke it down into commercial type contracting for under simplified procedures versus non-commercial, so we’re dividing the world there. It’s the only place where we saw new regulations coming in. Part 15 got rid of the old discussions and replaced it with negotiations. There is a lot of change. Part 8, taking the schedules ordering procedures out of the FAR and putting them back into the GSA Acquisition Regulations, that’s pretty revolutionary. So there’s a lot in there that is very much worth noting and is going to change how agencies operate and how vendors have to comply. It should streamline things, it should speed things up. It really does push decision-making down to the lowest level possible. And it will be interesting to see, since the FAR Council noted on the website that things that require a statutory or regulatory statutory changes or changes to executive order would be addressed with the second round of this, with the official rule making. So whether there’s even more up their sleeve, if there’s going to be more that happens. But I think that they did a lot to make this fairly momentous and they did it really fast. You remember the last time they tried to rewrite Part 15, it took years. They did it this over the course of a summer while they did every other part of the FAR as well.

Eric White We’re speaking with Emily Murphy, former GSA administrator and senior fellow at George Mason University Baroni Center for Government Contracting. Let’s get to the vendors themselves. Shutdown is still ongoing, as of this recording. What are you hearing and seeing from those vendors that have long-term contracts that are coming to a close, or they’re going to need some help operating in this new FAR environment and they may not have the necessary guidance that they could use at a time like this?

Emily Murphy So the first thing I’d say to companies that are operating, have a contract that’s about to lapse, read your contract, make sure you know what’s in it. Most contracts have a provision in there — it’s usually in 52.217, sometimes dash eight, sometimes dash nine — on how to extend that work. Make sure you know which clause you have or what clauses you have, what options are there. I’m hearing some talks about taking a no-cost extension. And that’s a decision agencies and vendors are going to have to make. But the vendors should be aware of when they do that, they’re performing at risk. That there is a good chance that they may not ever have that option exercise. They may not have that ability to get reimbursed for that. They certainly won’t get reimbursed for a no-cost extension, but they may not have something happen once the government shutdown is over. So it’s got to be a business decision they’re making at that point in time. But ultimately, know what’s in your contract, know to the greatest extent possible who it is you’re dealing with at the agency, what set of rules they’re following at this point in time, and have options in a strategy you’re willing to propose to the government to make it easier for them, because whether we’re back from the shutdown by the time this airs or we’re still on a shutdown, you’ve got a very small workforce dealing with a lot of work. And the easier you can make it for them, the better it’s going to be.

Eric White We’ve seen these shutdowns now popping up every couple of years or so, usually right around this time of year. Do you see any adjustments coming down the pipeline by vendors of putting provisions into contracts or taking necessary precautions, maybe waiting until they are messing with the extensions or deadlines before they hear whether or not there is going to be one or not? Especially, like I said, around this time of year when shutdowns seem to occur.

Emily Murphy Well, the last major shutdown that happened happened December of 2018, and it went through January of 2019, so it was the 35-day shutdown, it was the longest shutdown we’ve ever had. So while in the past it was fairly, you thought right after the fiscal year there being a risk of shutdown, the fact that it was a long shutdown that didn’t start until just before Christmas, I remember because I was at GSA at the time and people had gone home for the holiday before the shutdown happened. That made it a tough time. There’s never a good time for a shutdown, so I shouldn’t say that, but that was a tough time for people to be shutdown on Christmas. I don’t know that they’re trying to time a shutdown. It’s sort of reading tea leaves or trying to do some fortune telling. I think that smart companies, though, are planning to know that government shutdowns do happen and they have a plan for their workforce when that’s going to happen, whether it’s mandatory training that they need their employees to be taking, to maintain certifications, to comply with a government requirement, whether its the upskilling of that workforce, whether it’s working on strategic planning documents or other things, they’ve thought about how they’re going to use their workforce if the workforce isn’t able to show up. We talk a lot about what’s going to happen to federal employees and will they be paid for the work for this time that they have been furloughed. The contractors don’t get paid, and good contractors try to do everything in their power to keep paying their employees, but they’re never going to be made whole for that. And there’s a limit to how long a small business and midsize business can continue to pay people to not work. And we need to be very aware that this hits the industrial base, not just the federal employee base, and that both sides of this are feeling a lot of tension right now and a lot stress.

Eric White Wanted to finish up here by getting your thoughts on the East Wing renovation happening at the White House. People were obviously going back and forth about the actual move itself, but people like you and I were probably thinking, huh, I wonder how that contract was structured. What are your thoughts, and who do you think was handling it? We’ve got really three choices, the Executive Office of the President, GSA, your former camp, or even the Park Service, as the White Houses i actually designated as a national park.

Emily Murphy It is, and what’s interesting is when I was the GSA administrator, we were looking at doing renovations in the West Wing and that very much would have been a GSA contract. It would have in the Public Building Service doing that work. The East Wing, though, probably it’s going to fall into either the National Park Service or the [Executive] Office of the President that would be doing that work. It’s not a GSA building once you hit the East Wing. It’s fascinating when you look at the White House complex. There is an agreement that tells you down to what brick along the sidewalk is managed by GSA versus by Interior versus whoever else and who’s got responsibility for what. East Wing would definitely be either the, what they call room one or would be a National Park Service.

Eric White And when a private donor enters the picture, I imagine that that can add some complications to the paperwork, as you shake in your head now for those of us not watching on video. What does that entail, and did you ever have any experience with a private donor paying for something that the government usually does?

Emily Murphy I never had that experience at GSA. When I was at SBA, SBA had a lot of gift authority and we did occasionally get sponsorships or things along those lines that would come into play. It will allow them to go a lot faster because they’ve got private funds. But my recollection is that when they did the renovation at the White House years ago under Jackie Kennedy, that that was also funded a lot through private donations. And so there is precedent for private donations going in and assisting with paying for these things. And it’ll be interesting to see when the contract details come out, and I’m sure they will, how it’s all been structured and how it’s proceeding. And you look forward to getting a chance to look through those documents someday.

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Following the longest shutdown in U.S. history, the federal workforce is now trying to get back to at least some sense of normalcy.

While federal employees who have been furloughed for the last 43 days return to work Thursday, the Office of Personnel Management is setting expectations for agencies as they begin to update pay, leave and benefits for those impacted by the lapse in appropriations.

In new guidance, OPM said it is “is committed to ensuring that retroactive pay is provided as soon as possible.” Compensation will be provided for both furloughed and excepted federal employees, as the spending agreement that was enacted Wednesday evening reaffirmed. A 2019 law previously called for retroactive compensation for all federal employees impacted by a shutdown.

A senior Trump administration official said the White House “has urged agencies to get employee paychecks out expeditiously and accurately to not leave anyone waiting longer than necessary.”

But the timing of employees receiving their back pay varies, depending on what payroll provider an agency uses, and the different pay schedules across the federal workforce.

Sending out retroactive payments to employees involves working across agency HR offices, federal payroll providers and shared service centers. Agency HR offices, for instance, have to submit timecards for federal employees, which are then processed by the government’s various payroll providers.

According to the senior administration official, employees from the General Services Administration and OPM will be among the first to receive their retroactive paychecks, with an expected deposit date set for Saturday.

Employees at the departments of Veterans Affairs, Energy, and Health and Human Services, as well as civilian employees from the Defense Department, will receive their deposits shortly after that — this Sunday.

On Monday, affected employees from the departments of Education, State, Interior and Transportation, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, National Science Foundation, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Social Security Administration and NASA, are all expected to receive their back pay.

Then on Wednesday, employees from the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Treasury, Labor and Justice, along with the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Small Business Administration, are projected to get their paychecks. The timing of the retroactive payments for feds was first reported by Semafor.

The National Finance Center, a payroll provider housed under the Agriculture Department, confirmed that employees at agencies using NFC’s services should expect a payroll deposit by the middle of next week.

“In order to provide backpay for employees as quickly as possible, the National Finance Center will be expediting pay processing for pay period 22 and backpay for pay periods 19 (October 1-4), 20 (October 5-18), and 21 (October 19-November 1),” USDA wrote in an all-staff email Wednesday evening, obtained by Federal News Network.

Federal News Network has reached out to several other federal payroll providers requesting details on the timeline for processing retroactive payments.

The National Treasury Employees Union urged immediate back pay for all federal employees who have been going without compensation for the last six weeks.

“This is an emergency for federal employees across the country, and they should not have to wait another minute longer for the paychecks they lost during the longest government shutdown in history,” NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald said. “We call on all federal agencies to process the back pay immediately.”

In its new guidance, OPM also noted that to make payments as quickly as possible, payroll providers may need to “make some adjustments.” That could mean, for instance, that the initial retroactive payments employees receive might not reflect the exact calculations of their pay and leave hours.

“Payroll providers will work with agencies to make any necessary adjustments as soon as practicable,” OPM said.

Who receives back pay, and how much?

Furloughed employees will receive their “standard rate of pay” for the hours they would have worked if the government shutdown hadn’t occurred, OPM said in its guidance Wednesday evening.

But there are some exceptions to that. If a furloughed employee, for example, had been scheduled for overtime hours that would have occurred during the shutdown, OPM said they should be paid their premium rate for those hours.

Additionally, OPM said that allowances, differentials and other types of payments, like administratively uncontrollable overtime pay or law enforcement availability pay, should be paid as if the furloughed employee continued to work.

Although most employees impacted by the shutdown are ensured back pay, there are some smaller exceptions carved out where employees may not receive retroactive pay, OPM added.

If a furloughed employee was in a non-pay status before the shutdown began, for instance, then they are not entitled to receive back pay.

Excepted employees who were considered “absent without leave” (AWOL) — or in other words, took unapproved time off — will also not receive back pay for that time.

Guidance on leave, post-shutdown

Although excepted employees are not required to use paid leave for taking time off during the shutdown — and can instead enter a “furlough” period — there may still have been some instances where excepted employees took leave during the funding lapse, OPM wrote in its guidance.

In those cases, excepted employees who were approved to take paid leave during the shutdown will be charged for the hours from their leave bank, OPM said.

Agencies are also expected to begin adjusting leave accrual for furloughed employees. Now that the shutdown is over, furloughed employees should be placed in a “pay status” for the time they would have otherwise spent working during the funding lapse. That means accrual of annual and sick leave will be retroactively adjusted as if the employees were in a pay status, OPM said.

Excepted employees continued to accrue leave during the shutdown, which should be reflected in their leave banks, OPM said.

What happens to RIFs of federal employees?

On top of reaffirming back pay, the spending bill that was enacted Wednesday evening also rescinds the roughly 4,000 reductions in force that have occurred since Oct. 1. Federal employees will be temporarily protected from additional RIFs, at least until the end of January.

Agencies have five days to inform federal employees who received RIF notices in October that those actions are rescinded.

“Agencies should issue those notices and confirm to OPM the rescissions have been issued,” OPM’s guidance states.

At least 670,000 federal employees have been furloughed, and 730,000 employees have been working without pay during the shutdown. Agencies have been putting plans in the works to return all furloughed federal employees to their duties as of Thursday.

OPM also said agencies “may consider” providing flexibility for employees who might not be able to return to work immediately, such as by approving personal leave or adjusting individual work schedules.

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