Emotional Education Department ‘clap-outs’ celebrate departed federal employees

Dozens of emotional employees of the Ministry of Education participated in a final “clapping” in Washington, Colombia, after losing jobs against the background of restructuring the Trump Administration Agency.

The administration has reduced about 50% of the department’s workforce as part of President Donald Trump’s strategy and education Linda McMahon to eliminate the department and send education solutions to the United States.

Departing civil servants, who have either been terminated, retired or voluntarily redeemed, received about 30 minutes to extract their belongings this week – before leaving the building to applaud colleagues who were shouting “Thank you!” Outside the offices in Washington, Colombia County

The last chief of education, the former secretary of education Miguel Cardona, visited his old office to celebrate employees affected by the shaking of the workforce.

Clicking, trembling hands and cheering them, the Cardon told civil servants, “Thank you for your service.”

“These civil servants who are currently coming out deserve gratitude. They deserve respect. They worked hard – not only at the time when I served as a secretary, but before that,” said a cardon wearing ordinary clothes, told reporters in a short statement outside the agency’s headquarters.

“I’m here, for the staff here, thank you,” he added.

Danny Ripley shook the cardon’s hand and told him that her entire transport unit had been eliminated. Ripley has worked in the department for over 30 years and said she is now retiring.

“It feels like death,” Ripley told Abc News. “It feels like a bad divorce, it just feels heartbreaking.”

Despite the huge repair and nearly 2000 lost employees, McMahon stressed that the Ministry of Education would continue to administer its legal functions that disadvantaged students rely on, including grants, formula financing.

“The President made it clear today that none of the funding would stop [programs]”McMahon told ABC News Senior Political Correspondent Rachel Scott after the signing of Trump’s executive order last week, which directed McMahon to use all the necessary steps allowed under the Agency Removal Act, which was eavesdropped.

“I think this is his hope that even more funding can go to the United States. There will be more opportunities for it. And, you know, it means what he says. And so there will be no protection or reduction in funding,” she added.

Dreaming work “grabbed”

Washington, Colombia County, born Leonra Richardson and a crowd of emotional colleagues throughout the department, left the headquarters of the almost non -existent agency for the last time on Friday.

“It was a dream job,” Richardson told ABC News. “And this dream was taken out of me from the new administration.”

Richardson said that her entire office, the office of the CEO, according to data, was folded earlier this month by the “power reduction”, executed on March 11.

Sydney Licher, a civil servant in the middle -aged career, said she felt forced and did not know what was next for her. After leaving with his belongings, including beach volleyball and the sack of the merchant Joe, Licher stressed that the reforms were not only unjustified but also unpopular.

“It’s definitely emotional,” Licher said, holding tears. “I feel bad for all people in the main information office who have to collect all our laptops and equipment – like, they also don’t want to do it.

“It’s just a really sad day. But seeing the support here by all other ED ministry officials, and then, for example, other federal agencies, and then the public just shows me that, for example, people don’t want it, and it’s not popular and it doesn’t have to happen,” Licher added.

Richardson and Licher worked in the same division, Ocdo that was closed. Without the office, Richardson said there would hardly be anyone left at the federal level to collect data to show improvements or delay students.

The Trump administration claims that it is making redundancies to get rid of the government of bureaucratic swelling, but Richardson told Abc News that IT was not based on policy or bureaucratic. Licher, an analyst who works on machine -intelligence machine training, told ABC News that she had taken on this job after returning from the Peace Corps. She added that the work of the civil service should not relate to policy.

“I believe in public service,” Licher said. “I believe in the non -partisan civil service. We are important, we have meaning.”

Meanwhile, departing civil servants such as Dr. Jason Cotrell, a data coordinator at the post-conversion service, the largest grant department in the department, said he believed that students were at risk as the Ministry of Education was reduced.

“The students of our nation will suffer,” Cotrell said. “I think of doctoral students who are, you know, try to do cancer research or, you know, learning or whatever, and without the means to support them, they will become difficult to succeed without these means and will not acquire this knowledge we need.”

The goodbye ceremony in the department comes as the “clapping” will continue to continue throughout the country next week in regional offices in places such as Cleveland, Dallas and San Francisco. But these moments hit the Richardson Home, which details how she overcame a teenage pregnancy as she grew east of the river in the southeastern quadrant of the city.

She said it was so close but so far from the federal government.

“I hate that I cannot be a voice or inspiration for the young girls growing in the southeastern DC I wanted to inspire,” Richardson said, adding that she “wants to give a chance to know, to show that there is another way and you can do it ahead.”

“You can make a big impact and a big difference in the country coming from where we from them,” she said.

Alex Ederson on ABC News contributed to this report