Giri Viswanathan, Senior Photographer

Public education in the U.S. is under existential threat, according to Rep. Rosa DeLauro.

“Education is the pathway to the American dream,” she said at a Tuesday press conference ahead of President Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress. “That pathway is now at risk. Our schools are under assault from Elon Musk and the Trump administration.”

Amid a torrent of news from Washington, DeLauro has made protecting funds for education a priority. As the Department of Government Efficiency announced nearly $900 million in cuts to the Department of Education’s research arm and the DOE announced nearly $1.2 billion in cuts to “woke” and “divise” grants and contracts, the congresswoman has responded indignantly.

DeLauro’s chosen guest at Tuesday’s address was Connecticut’s 2025 Teacher of the Year, Julia Miller. A Wilbur Cross alum, Miller now teaches social studies and civics at the Metropolitan Business Academy in Wooster Square. She spoke on Tuesday from Rep. DeLauro’s office at the Capitol about “these senseless threats to our public schools.”

Miller explained that half of New Haven’s public schools are Title I, which means that they receive funding from the federal government. According to Justin Harmon, in the last fiscal year, the entire school district received $24 million in grants from the Department of Education.

“If the Department of Education is dismantled, 26 million vulnerable students [across the country] would lose access to needed services,” Miller said. “This isn’t cutting bloat or excess. This would be taking away resources from children in already underfunded districts like my own across the country.”

Both DeLauro and Miller discussed the foundational role of public education in democracy — long an understanding shared by national leaders. 

“Public education was conceived as a mechanism for strengthening our democracy—by ensuring basic levels of access to the kinds of training necessary for full participation in our society,” Jack Schneider, a director of the UMass Amherst’s Center for Education Policy, wrote to the News. “Attacks on public education, then, should be understood as what they are: attacks on democracy itself.”

Miller told the News that it is “hard to explain” the vilification of education.

DeLauro was similarly unsure.

“I don’t know why one would demonize education,” she told the News. “It seems that teachers are an easy scapegoat.”

In Trump’s speech, education came up only briefly. He said that his administration is “working to protect our children from toxic ideologies in our schools,” mentioning critical race theory and “transgender ideology.”

DeLauro released a video hours after Trump finished speaking. She said she found his address “vengeful,” “revengeful” and not “befitting a great world leader or a great president of the United States.”

According to reporting in the Wall Street Journal, a draft of an upcoming executive order directs Linda McMahon, the Secretary of Education, to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Education Department.”