EASTHAMPTON — The Easthampton Public School district joined a coalition of educators, school districts and unions Monday in filing legal action against the Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education.

The complaint was filed by Democracy Forward in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts in response to mass firings and other cuts put forth by the Trump administration. Other parties alongside Easthampton in the complaint include the Somerville Public School Committee, the American Federation of Teachers-Massachusetts, AFSCME Council 93, the American Association of University Professors, and the Service Employees International Union.

Democracy Forward, a Washington, D.C.-based legal organization, is representing Easthampton free of charge in this legal action.

“We disagree with both the principle behind the actions and the actions themselves,” said Easthampton School Committee Chair Laura Scott.

This lawsuit comes four days after Trump’s executive order instructing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to take steps to facilitate the closure of the department. Mass firings and some voluntary departures from the department also resulted in the sudden loss of about 2,000 employees earlier this month.

The complaint argues that staffing cuts to the department — including the entire staff of the Office of English Language Acquisition, more than half of the enforcement positions for the Office of Civil Rights, the team that supervises the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, and attorneys providing guidance to the department — have rendered it incapable of carrying out its legal duties.

In a separate legal action filed earlier this month, Massachusetts and 19 other states also moved to prevent the dismantling of the agency.

Scott said that in the wake of the announced Education Department cuts, there has been “a lot of misunderstanding about what the Department of Education does and doesn’t do,” especially surrounding statements by President Trump and supporters that dismantling the department will “give [education] back to the states,” she said.

Trump has argued for more educational control to be returned to the states, and has criticized the department as being inefficient.

The Department of Education does not set Easthampton’s or any other school district’s curriculum, Scott explained.

“We set our own curriculum that just has to meet our state standards,” she said.

However, Scott said that what the Education Department does do is provide vital funding and services to Easthampton’s schools and schools across the nation. Continued cuts to the department’s funding and programs could be “devastating” to Easthampton, she said, which is why this lawsuit aims to put a stop to them.

Easthampton’s interim Superintendent Maureen Binienda said Easthampton Public Schools received almost $887,000 this fiscal year from the Department of Education — $554,000 of which goes toward supporting students with disabilities through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

“If we lost that funding, we would not be able to provide those services,” Binienda said.

A loss in this area of funding could be particularly impactful for Easthampton, which has a “higher than average” number of students with disabilities and on Individualized Education Programs, said Scott.

Scott also noted that receiving advisory aid from the department’s Office of Civil Rights was of immense help when the district sought to dismantle systemic racial biases at play at Easthampton High School.

“Our schools, our students, and our staff rely on the Department of Education for critical data, resources, funding, and services that would be very difficult and costly for our district to replace,” the Easthampton School Committee said in a letter to district families on Monday afternoon. “We feel strongly that joining this case is the right thing to do for our students, faculty, and community — and in support of public education.”

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit argue that the federal agency performs essential work authorized by Congress, and that the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle it therefore raise “important constitutional issues.”

Alexa Lewis can be reached at alewis@gazettenet.com.