U.S. Department of Education offering $25K to staff to quite before deadline

The U.S. Department of Education is offering an incentive of up to $25,000 to the majority of its staff to resign or retire by Monday evening ahead of rumored work force reductions.

In a department-wide email obtained and first reported by Politico, Education Department employees were offered the one-time buyout and given an 11:59 p.m. deadline on Monday to accept or decline the deal.

“We can confirm that the Education Department emailed its staff today, offering employees up to a $25,000 Voluntary Separation Incentive Payment (VSIP) starting today,” a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Education shared in a statement with Fox News Digital. 

“This is a one-time offer in advance of a very significant Reduction in Force for the US Department of Education,” Jacqueline Clay, a chief human capital officer, said in the email.

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Clay explained that the payout would be “the equivalent of severance pay or $25,000, whichever is less.”

The outlet reported that most department employees are eligible for the buyout, with a few exceptions. Those excluded from the offer include anyone using disability retirement and those who have received a student loan repayment benefit in the last 36 months or were awarded a retention bonus in the last 12 months.

The offer would go into effect on March 31, according to the email. 

The department’s offer comes on the same day Linda McMahon, President Trump’s pick for Education secretary, is set to be confirmed by the Senate.

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Dozens of employees are already on administrative leave as the Trump administration moves to shut down the department completely, the Hill reported.

President Donald Trump has said he wants to abolish the Department of Education, calling it a “con job” that has failed to properly educate American students.

“It’s a big con job,” Trump previously said. “They ranked the top countries in the world. We’re ranked No. 40, but we’re ranked No. 1 in one department: cost per pupil. So, we spend more per pupil than any other country in the world, but we’re ranked No. 40.”

Trump recently indicated that if McMahon is confirmed, he wants her to “put herself out of a job.”

While complete elimination of the Education Department would take an act of Congress, the agency is already being trimmed down in other ways, as nearly $1 billion in contracts have been canceled.

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Back in February, the department confirmed that it canceled nearly $350 million in “woke” spending, purportedly addressing the most pressing problems of education policy and practice.

The agency canceled 10 contracts with Regional Educational Laboratories (REL), totaling $336 million, after a review of the contracts uncovered “wasteful and ideologically driven spending not in the interest of students and taxpayers,” a news release states.

It’s not clear if the cuts were related to the Department of Government Efficiency slashing the Education Department’s activities related to DEI. 

Fox News Digital’s Louis Casiano contributed to this report.