Alabama has been receiving millions a day from the U.S. Department of Education. Those funds were halted Wednesday after the federal department announced massive layoffs as part of the Trump administration's effort to cut wasteful spending.
Alabama State Superintendent of Education Dr. Eric Mackey carried on his normal duties afterward. At a statewide event in Montgomery to award visual arts honors to students, he told members of the State School Board who were gathered there that he expected the funds to be restored, possibly by Thursday. He appeared not to be worried.
President Donald Trump had explicitly instructed his brand-new U.S. Secretary of Education to "shut down your department." The strategy announced is to eliminate federal bureaucracy and give the money directly to state and local school officials to administer.
Mackey said, "Our schools depend on these funds, and as long as the funds continue to be made available for our schools, less federal regulation and burdensome paperwork we would welcome."
Governor Kay Ivey, who is legally the chairwoman of the State Board of Education, said earlier Wednesday, "I'm all for shrinking government where we can."
"And truth be known, every state has an education department. I know we've got a good one and a state board of education and local boards that can handle education very well. I am going to trust President Trump on this one," she added.
St. Clair County Superintendent of Education Justin Burns attended the awards event, where several local students won honors.
He said, "They will not cut Alabama off for long. We haven't done anything wrong."
It is not clear whether the cuts in the federal Department of Education are being engineered by Trump's new "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, or by the new Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon. Musk's team uses a strategy of plunging full-speed ahead with massive cuts of waste and unnecessary spending. They then go back and tweak the cuts, restoring programs that appear worthy. It will likely not make any difference which team is leading the federal education cuts because both are using similar practices, and both answer to the President.
Musk has a procedure for handling things that need to be restored after being cut out. He developed it in his "efficiency surges" in his innovative businesses. He calls it one of his "algorithms."
This approach is explained in the new biography of Elon Musk by award-winning biographer Walter Isaacson. He also wrote the biographies of other difference-makers, including Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin and Leonardo DaVinci.
Anyone losing sleep over Musk's role in federal cuts needs to read the Musk book.
Musk's approach to cutting the unnecessary boils down to this:
"If you don't restore at least 10% of the things you cut, then you didn't cut enough to begin with."
That is a concept that is as fascinating as it is simple. It tells us:
- Musk is well aware that a radical wholesale-cutting process will inevitably cut out some things that were useful and not wasteful. When you are cutting that many different programs, it is impossible to get it 100% right.
- Musk and DOGE fully intend to review their cuts afterward and listen to any objections to specific cuts.
- When the Trump administration restores cuts, that does not mean they were doing a lousy job. It means that needed restorations are part of the job.
In Musk's radical purge of the unnecessary in his business, Solar City, Issacson said this:
When Musk arrived at 9 p.m., they showed him why they needed a second nail, and he nodded. It was part of the algorithm: If you don't end up having to restore 10 percent of the parts you deleted, then you didn't delete enough.
The same approach — comprehensive waste cutting followed by careful and specific restorations — was part of his success at Tesla, SpaceX, NeuraLink, StarLink, XTwitter, Optimus and PayPal. That approach is apparently being used in his management of DOGE and its mission to save our federal government from financial ruin.
The Musk restoration algorithm can be used to safeguard needed programs in the Alabama education system.
Jim 'Zig' Zeigler writes about Alabama's people, places, events, groups and prominent deaths. He is a former Alabama Public Service Commissioner and State Auditor. You can reach him for comments at [email protected].
Don't miss out! Subscribe to our newsletter and get our top stories every weekday morning.
