Oh now I see who Roundabout is parroting.
Got that? She claims most of the nation's public school students are disabled, poor or rural, which is absurd on its face. Randi, a supposed educator herself, doesn't seem good with numbers, so let's take a look at some data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which closely tracks these kinds of things.
According to the NCES, about 15 percent of the public school population receives special education services, while 19 percent of students are from rural communities. There's likely a decent amount of crossover between these two populations, so we can conclude that Randi's use of "most" is a gross exaggeration.
As for the "poor" students, that is determined by the number of pupils receiving free or reduced-price lunches at school. That number is pretty high, hovering around 50 percent of all students, but here's what Randi doesn't tell you: the lunch program is funded through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is now in the capable hands of Brooke Rollins. The kids are not going to starve.
The numbers don't matter at all, of course, because the funding isn't going to be stripped away from any of these students, but the already-dwindling power of Randi Weingarten and the teachers' unions—who kept our kids out of school during COVID and pushed radical ideologies instead of teaching the basics—will certainly be greatly diminished.
Here's a number for Randi Weingarten and the unions: Your stranglehold on the public education system at the federal level will be reduced by 100 percent.
https://redstate.com/terichristoph/2025/03/20/randi-weingarten-implodes-as-doge-decimates-department-of-education-n2186898