CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Have you ever thought about where your school lunch comes from? How about the reason it’s free? Well it’s the Department of Education that funds it for students across the nation, including several schools across the Coastal Bend. But there is a possibility that could change.
President-Elect Donald Trump is looking at several changes he wants to make, including access to education. During his campaign trail, Trump repeatedly said he wanted to get rid of federal assistance for education, which could change the way students learn.
Lauren Lutz is a first-generation student and a federal Pell Grant recipient.
“It was the deciding factor between going to college and not going to college. Knowing that I have that safety net that I can stay in school due to this money is comforting,” Lutz said.
That means the federal government stepped in to help her go to college, something she said she’s grateful for.
“I nearly had to drop out of school. Leaving school without a degree, I felt like a failure. Then having to pay my loans six months after that knowing I didn't have a degree to have the level of income I need to pay those loans, I was so scared,” Lutz said.
That's just one of the ways students depend on the Department of Education.
“The Department of Education is the oversight and we depend on them for a lot of our funding, training, and advocacy,” American Federation Teachers President Nancy Vera said.
Vera said the department helps fund several programs from the time students are learning sentences to the time they graduate with a Bachelor's degree.
“When we're talking about South Texas in particular, we are talking about poverty-struck people. Many of us middle-class families are also struggling and we need some help,” Vera said.
Vera said the way the department helps is by funding programs like Headstart and even providing free lunches to most schools in Corpus Christi ISD.
“But it doesn't matter if it’s funded federally because its all going to go away with the elimination of the Department of Education,” Vera said.
TAMU-CC senior and fellow Pell Grant recipient Alicia Mares said she worries about the future of education for other students, even her own siblings.
“We’re on the poverty line, so we definitely will have to be working a lot more than we already do to get my siblings where they want to be,” Mares said.
For now, Trump’s proposal is just that. No official decision has been made. In the meantime, the American Federation of Teachers will continue to fight to keep the Department of Education from being eliminated.
