The Associated Press and other news sources reported on March 20 that an executive order had been signed to begin taking steps to dismantle the federal Department of Education. As Dante explains here, this should concern all FA members as it would have an immediate negative impact on the college budget, on our colleagues and on our students.

A lot has changed in the last few months. Things feel different for the first time in my 20-year career at SCCC. There are multiple threats coming daily that are targeting our profession, our students and our rights as educators.

I have attended at least a dozen meetings over the last two months between our state union New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) and our national parent unions American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and National Education Association (NEA), and one theme is prominent:

Our profession, our labor rights and our academic freedom rights are all at stake.

There’s so much to cover that I will focus on federal issues in this article as well as address concerns at the state, county and college levels in a companion piece. I know it’s a lot, but we cannot let ourselves become overwhelmed by these attacks. We have to face them head on and push back as fiercely as we can.

Federal cuts that will harm SCCC

The major news coming in recently is the proposed closure of the Department of Education (DOE). Some may ask, why keep the DOE open? It’s a bureaucratic agency that often scrutinizes institutions, especially when it comes to accreditation processes such as Middle States.

The DOE actually provides SCCC with many resources for our students, some of which are the very jobs of our FA colleagues.

In fall 2024, 37% of our matriculated students received federal Pell Grant money, which is funded through the DOE. That’s almost 3,000 students who can be financially affected and prevented from attending SCCC if Pell Grants are cut or scaled back. Also, nearly 250 of our students receive services through the DOE-funded TRIO grant program, which is designed to assist low income/economically disadvantaged students, students with disabilities and first-generation college students as they pursue their academic journey.

Additionally, New York receives $6 billion annually from the DOE, and proposed cuts would slash $2 billion that the state receives in providing universal school meals. While SCCC does not receive money for school meals, budget line items do not exist in silos. If one category of a budget is cut, then the ripple effect is felt because funding must then come from another source. And when priorities for public education compete against with each other, higher education budgets almost always lose. That is, if the state loses federal K-12 funding, we believe they will pull yet more from their support of community colleges like SCCC to fill those gaps.

Other possible cuts from the DOE and the federal budget can come through the process of budget reconciliation, which is legislation that only needs a simple majority in the Senate. The reconciliation process deals with mandatory funding, or programs that are automatic and do not require Congressional action to continue. Medicare, Medicaid, taxes, SNAP and student loans are prime examples (while Social Security is a mandatory funding program, it cannot be touched by a reconciliation bill). Below is a summary of how budget reconciliation can decimate public higher education:

• Limiting federal financial aid, both Pell grants and federal student loans, to the median cost of attendance—intentionally leaving half of all students with unmet financial need
• Eradicating the American Opportunity Tax Credit, a credit for qualified education expenses paid for an eligible student for the first four years of higher education; taxpayers can get a maximum annual credit of $2,500 per eligible student
• Eliminating the Lifetime Learning Credit that provides a nonrefundable tax credit equal to 20 percent of qualified tuition and related expenses of the taxpayer that do not exceed $10,000
• Eliminating the Exclusion of Scholarship and Fellowship Income, which are generally excluded from taxable income if used for tuition and related expenses
• Abolishing the Deduction of Interest on Student Loans; middle-class taxpayers currently can deduct up to $2,500 of interest paid on student loans from their taxable income
• Making student loans more expensive by eliminating existing income-driven repayment plans and replacing them with a less affordable option
• Sunsetting Grad and Parent PLUS Loans: Eliminating Parent PLUS loans, offered to parents of dependent undergraduate students, and grad PLUS loans, offered to graduate students and students enrolled in professional programs, will limit access to these programs; if students still want to enroll they will be forced into the private student loan market, which lacks important consumer protections
• Cutting Title I funding for K-12 schools (schools with high concentrations of low-income students).

Any federal cuts to K-12 funding will ultimately impact state budgets as they will have to cover those costs. And we know that New York State already perennially fails to fully fund the NYS education law mandated 40% of our operating budget, much less the original one third; that last thing we need is for state funding to get worse.

Cuts to Medicaid

You may ask, “What does Medicaid have to do with higher education funding?” The proposed $880 billion cut to Medicaid is frightening because that means states will have to then pick up the cost of this program. When states pick up the Medicaid cost for their citizens, that money needs to come from somewhere, which will most likely be taken from public education—both higher education and K-12 budgets.

All of the leaders in our national and state unions are seriously concerned that if these proposed draconian cuts to Medicaid go through, then public education will be decimated. Any or all of these cuts will have a dramatic impact on the state’s funding of public higher education.

While we have excellent partners in the NYS and Suffolk County legislatures, who have demonstrated support for the work we do at the college, our federal government is threatening to override all of those partnerships we have developed over the decades.

Call to action

On March 4 I sent an email to the membership calling for participation in a national Day of Action. Thank you to all of you who took a moment to send a message to your elected officials. Many union members from across the country participated in this event, with more than 2,000 collective actions across the U.S., causing many Congressional reps to pull back on their rhetoric on Title I funding. We cannot stop this fight. The attacks are coming from everywhere. A couple weeks ago, a friend texted me to say the Ohio State House voted to diminish faculty tenure, ban faculty strikes and restrict ways in which faculty teach.

Community colleges have a lot to lose with these proposed federal cuts. As detailed above, this includes but is not limited to Pell Grant funding for our students, millions of dollars in federal grants that SCCC receives, academic freedom and more. The potential financial hit is considerable. For a comprehensive list of the threats to our profession and to SCCC, see this AFT Higher Education Resources page and use the QR codes to sign up for calls to action and read the various public higher education rights that AFT is working to defend.

You can also take immediate action by telling Congress: No cuts to education. This letter will be sent to your Congressional representative and Senators Schumer and Gillibrand. We must continue to send a message to prevent these cuts to higher education and to protect both our students and our profession. 

We may very well be in the fight for our lives with what is being proposed by our federal government. The proposed dismantling and decimation of our institution by starving or removing federal funds for education will have a drastic effect on SCCC for years to come. This will also cause tuition to balloon to extraordinary levels which will deter students from coming to SCCC to better their lives. Our profession, our students and our institution need this advocacy.

We should not only be concerned about what is happening, we need to be very concerned.

Next up: Continue on to read “Be concerned: State, county and college issues.”