Trump, his cabinet and Congress are poised to sharply intensify the war on public education. Trump his Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, both billionaires, are dedicated to transforming education at every level into a source of vast new wealth for Wall St. investors, a process that is already underway. Their plan is to gut funding for public schools, while promoting for-profit charter and other private schools, and their partners in Congress are chomping at the bit to carry out the Trump-DeVos program.

Trump’s “America First” budget calls for slashing already-inadequate public education funding by $9.2 billion, or 13.5%, with money to go into a huge build-up of the already swollen military budget. The cuts are especially aimed at programs that help low-income and disabled students. It calls for huge cuts in teacher training, summer school and after-school programs, as well as TRIO and GEAR UP which help prepare low-income students for college. In his campaign, Trump promised to get rid of 490,000 teachers.

School lunch programs would also be slashed. Trump’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, outrageously claimed that said that there is “no demonstrable evidence” that school lunches “help kids who don’t get fed at home get fed so they do better in school.”

While cutting just about everything to do with public education, this budget proposes to massively increase funding for “school choice,” that is, for-profit schools.