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Virginia Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine have joined 19 other lawmakers in the Senate in signing a letter addressed to the U.S. Secretary of Education, expressing their concern that without the Department of Education, students with disabilities will not have access to education. The senators say to Sec. Linda McMahon that shuttering the department will “cause immense harm to all students, and especially students with disabilities,” because their families rely on federal funding for critical programs that are administered by the department. In 1979, before the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was divided into two separate departments, findings indicated “that this department structure was inefficient and resulted in a lack of attention to public education. The Department of Education is the only agency with an existing institutional infrastructure and a staff of subject matter experts dedicated to ensuring equal educational opportunity for children and students with disabilities.”