BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Alabama education officials were briefly locked out of the federal system used to access nearly $9 million in education funding Wednesday morning, delaying routine reimbursements and raising concerns about the U.S. Department of Education plans to cut staff by nearly half.
State accounting staff encountered the problem while submitting a routine funding request through the department’s “G-5 portal,” according to State Superintendent Eric Mackey.
“They were unable to log in. It was just shut down,” Mackey told Alabama Daily News Wednesday afternoon.
A message on the portal cited “severe staffing constraints” and warned of long wait times to reach an agent.
“And with the department closed (Wednesday), there was nobody answering the phone,” he said.
Federal officials Tuesday announced plans to lay off more than 1,300 of U.S. Department of Education’s 4,100 employees. Presumably a first move toward President Donald Trump’s plan to dismantle the agency. The layoffs, along with voluntary resignations, will nearly halve the staff.
The department sent an email to employees Tuesday telling them the agency’s regional offices and Washington headquarters would be closed Wednesday, citing unspecified “security reasons.” Officials said they would reopen offices Thursday.
Alabama receives more than $500 million each year in federal funding, and the affected request included special education and Title I funding, Mackey said. Federal funds are provided on a reimbursement basis, meaning schools have already spent the money. While there is no fixed schedule for submitting receipts, Alabama processes requests regularly.
“We can certainly cover a day or two,” Mackey added. “But if it went on for a quarter, now that would be a real problem. Because at some point it would get hard to cover because you’ve already paid the expenses.”
As president of the Council of Chief State School Officers, Mackey said he heard other states also ran into issues Wednesday. Around 2 p.m., the state department’s accounting staff regained access and processed the request. The state expects confirmation of the deposit within 24 hours.
Mackey noted that under normal circumstances, this would be dismissed as a technical glitch.
“Maybe it’s a coincidence,” he said. “But if it is, it’s a terrible coincidence for the U.S. Department of Education that their tech portal would go down on the day that they’re also closing the department and reducing the staff by half.”
He also raised concerns about key U.S. Department of Education positions – including the Deputy and Assistant Education Secretary – remaining unfilled.
“Had those people been confirmed, I would have been on the phone calling somebody. But there was nobody to call, and the department was closed.”
Despite Wednesday’s delay, he does not anticipate ongoing disruptions in federal funding.
“Money for special education has been congressionally mandated and belongs to the schools and the children in this state. Taxpayers paid the money. Congress has said that money goes to schools to support children who have special needs. So it needs to flow.”
However, he worries that fewer staff could mean delays in getting questions answered.
Mackey said he hopes to have answers by the time the Alabama Board of Education meets Thursday in Montgomery.
“I hope the department comes out and says, ‘Hey, here’s what happened. It shouldn’t have happened. We apologize. We’re working on it to make sure it doesn’t happen again.’ We all have glitches, but when glitches go unexplained is when people get really anxious.”
There was also Wednesday an outage on StudentAid.gov, the federal website for student loans and financial aid, The Associated Press reported.
A list of laid-off staff obtained and verified by AP shows more than 300 people cut from Federal Student Aid — two dozen of them from Federal Student Aid’s technology division.
That included the entire team responsible for systems supporting the FAFSA form, a person with knowledge of the outage told The Associated Press, speaking anonymously for fear of retaliation.
While laid-off staffers are still technically employed until March 21, they had limited access to their email, phones and computers, making a response to the outage difficult, the person said. At one point Wednesday, about 70 people had joined a Teams call to try to pinpoint the cause of the outage.