Among the many promises President elect Trump has vowed to make good on during his second term is dismantling the federal Education Department.

But experts agree accomplishing it will be far easier said than done.

For starters, he'll need the help of Congress, where the idea is unlikely to gain traction.

Even with Republican control of both the Senate and House.

It doesn't appear, at least for now, that Trump would have the necessary votes, but he could give the agency less money and shrink its footprint by cutting employees.

For more on the effect it would have on our schools here in New Jersey, I'm joined by Hannah Gross education and child welfare writer.

Hannah, good to see you.

So I know you've been looking into this.

Let's dive into this first part about just why it would be so tough for this to happen in the first place.

Thanks, Bri.

So the Education Department was created by Congress, which means it would need to be Congress that would dismantle it.

And a lot of the initiatives of the Education Department are widely popular among both parties.

So it would be difficult for Trump to get the necessary votes, even though he does have control in the House and the Senate.

But he's talked a lot about giving less money to schools that say, teach gender ideology right, or critical race theory, things like that.

Does the federal Department of Education actually have control over that and curriculum?

Even the federal Education Department does not have a lot of direct oversight over schools across the country.

Curriculum decisions are made at a district level in New Jersey based on standards that are developed by the state.

But normally the federal Education Department does not have control.

So what are the practical implications then?

If this department were to go away, how would we see that affect our students here?

So if the department goes away, it's possible that a lot of its functions and the sources of funding that make its way to New Jersey schools would just be transferred into other departments.

Because the Education Department hasn't always existed in a lot of the main funding sources actually used to belong to other departments.

So it could return to the way that it was before.

Yeah, but I wonder, would those departments then get extra money, extra federal employees to take on that larger workload?

And I'm guessing the answer is going to be probably not.

Yeah, it's unclear if that's going to happen, but likely they would need extra resources and extra support because it does take a lot of resources to control an $80 billion budget that the Education Department has, but.

They do oversee federal student aid.

So what about for our college students?

I mean, we are already in a difficult situation with federal student aid.

It's possible that aid would go down or be focused more on private institutions than it is currently, or career technical education, which is a big priority of who he has nominated to lead the Education Department.

Yeah, let's talk about her for a bit.

This is Linda McMahon, which is curious because if the department is going to go away, why name someone to lead it, I guess in his mind to usher it through its end of its era.

But what do we know about Linda McMahon and her credentials for leading the department?

In Trump's announcement, he said that he picked Linda McMahon to help send education back to the States, which has been a big campaign promise of his.

And she has experience to do that, according to Trump, because she has a lot of experience in politics and she served in his first administration leading the Small Business Administration and is also co-chair of his transition team.

So she's been in the Trump orbit.

Clearly works well with Trump and is someone that he thinks can handle this job in terms of education experience, she has a bit of a slimmer resumé than some of the past secretaries she served on the Connecticut State Board of Education for one year and the Board of trustees at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut for about 16 years.

Okay.

So a little bit less of the traditional background that we would see.

But I mean, what should parents know?

Anybody who's reading this, who feels concerned about it or maybe they want to see more control in the state, I mean, what are the implications that parents and students rightly should know?

I would say to parents, just keep paying attention to what's going on.

I know that most of the funding in New Jersey comes from local and state sources.

Only about 5% comes from the federal government, which means there probably won't be too many changes that are felt by students and parents, at least immediately.

So just keep following it and also keep paying attention to what's happening in the state and what's happening in your school district, because that's really what's going to have more of an impact.

All right, Hannah.

Of course, there's the full piece online about this.

You can check it out at NJSpotlightNews.org.

Hannah Gross for us.

Hannah, thanks so much.

Thanks Bri.