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A lot of changes have been happening in Washington, D.C. since President Donald Trump was sworn in for his second term.One proposed change that people are keeping an eye on: the elimination of U.S. Department of Education, something Trump has signaled.How would this affect Alabama?The short answer is we would have to wait and see. However, state education superintendent Eric Mackey is ready to lead schools through whatever will happen."We’re certainly watching what’s going on in Washington," said Mackey.Closing the department leaves questions as to what will happen to Alabama schools without some of the federal funding, or what would happen to specific areas.IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) supports special education effortsTitle I funds schools with high povertyTitle III helps with English language learners.While those are just a few areas of funding, there's a lot more education leaders and families are concerned about."Those are all codified by Congress," Mackey said. "They may change the structure, they may change the oversight, but those programs are not going away. They've been codified by Congress. They have been funded by Congress." There would have to be an act of Congress to close the department. H.R.899 has been introduced to do just that. The legislation currently sits with the House Education and Workforce committee.According to Congress' website, it's sponsored by 30 Republican representatives but none from Alabama."We certainly want to make sure that that funds that support children, especially children in poverty and children with special needs, that those funds continue to flow from Washington," he said.Before the DOE was formed, there were certain protections for special needs students."Let's look back to 1978, there was no Department of Education but there still was a law that preceded IDEA - the old public school education law that protected the rights of special needs students. We still had Title I. Title I program goes back to the 1960s," he explained.Mackey says before the DOE, there was also the HEW ( health, education, and welfare), which was housed under a different agency. There was still governance structure but no cabinet secretary.>> �������� 13 ON-THE-GO: Download our app for freeMackey believes if DOE is eliminated, programs would be housed under different agencies. He said "If that happens, it won't cause a problem in the State of Alabama so long as the funding continues.""Somebody has to administer special ed programs, somebody has to administer Title I, somebody has to administer career tech," he said.�������� 13's Jarvis Robertson asked Mackey if there were any changes he'd like to see with DOE."We'd love to see some things streamlined at the U.S. Department of Ed.," Mackey explained."Sometimes the Department of Ed. has added extra layers of bureaucracy and rules, and data collection on top of that. So, an example we saw just recently was in December, the Department of Ed put out a huge new data collection burden on the states. A lot of our folks were worried about that, had to do with career tech. In our state and nationally, the career tech teachers and administrators groups got together and said, look, this is going to take time away from teaching kids to do data collection for the U.S. Department of Education. And so we've seen just this week, the administrations reversed that and said, okay, we're not going to do that data collection," Mackey said.Alabama schools funding for the Fiscal Year 2023 was 10.3 percent federal and 58.5 percent state.Stay updated on the latest political stories with the �������� 13 app. You can download it here.