Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green warned that President Trump’s sweeping changes to the US Department of Education Tuesday have "created widespread anxiety and confusion locally, undermining the stability our students and educators need to thrive.”

The move also marks the first steps of Trump’s overall goal of totally dismantling the department, which has deep Rhode Island roots dating back to the very first national commissioner of education, Henry Barnard.

Six offices within the department will be moved to separate federal agencies, most notably the offices that oversee elementary and secondary education and postsecondary education, which will now fall under the Department of Labor. The labor department will oversee Title I funding, which is a vital source of support for urban districts in Rhode Island.

Few federal agencies have been challenged as consistently as the education department, which has weathered attempts to strip its powers since the top job became a cabinet level position more than 40 years ago.

A national education department has had a target on its back for much longer, as Barnard learned during his stint crafting and running the office back in 1867.

Barnard, who was born in Connecticut and went to Yale, was Rhode Island’s first commissioner of public schools in 1845, and he helped create what is now Rhode Island College. The private Henry Barnard School (a prestigious PK-5 school) used to be housed on the RIC campus, but it merged with Providence Country Day in 2023.

Barnard was tapped as the first national education commissioner when Congress created the department in 1867, part of an effort to collect more national statistics and report on the status of American schools. It was designed as a tiny and mostly powerless office to assuage fears from lawmakers over nationalizing education.

“I have no prejudices of my own to impose on the country,” Barnard said at the time. 

Things didn’t entirely work out for Barnard in Washington. It took only a year for Congress to downgrade his department into an office, and so began the 150-plus year debate over the role of the federal government in education. 

Barnard’s thoughts about the capital were summed up in a sole entry from his diary.

“Washington—a dismal experience," he wrote.