Interagency agreements, explained: Congress takes opposing paths

An interagency agreement, or IAA, is how the U.S. Department of Education (ED) has been shifting day-to-day administration of specific programs to other federal agencies, without changing the underlying law that assigns those programs to ED. Since May 2025, ED has signed 14 such agreements with 6 other federal agencies. That total includes the 6-agreement package announced last November that moved core functions of 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC) to the Department of Labor (DOL). Under that agreement, DOL manages 21st CCLC grant competitions, technical assistance, and program integration with its own workforce initiatives, while ED retains what it calls statutory oversight, and states continue receiving Title IV, Part B funds without interruption. The administration frames these agreements as a way to break up the federal education bureaucracy and return education to the states, following the president's March 2025 executive order directing the secretary of education to take steps toward closing ED.

Why this keeps ending up in Congress

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act names ED, not DOL or any other agency, as the statutory home for 21st CCLC and the 26 other formula and discretionary grant programs covered by last November's interagency agreements. An interagency agreement can shift day-to-day administration, but it does not alter that underlying statute, and closing a federal department or permanently reassigning its statutory functions requires an act of Congress.

Members of both parties have raised questions about where that line sits. Two efforts now before Congress take opposite approaches. In the Senate, S. 5046, sponsored by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), would prohibit ED from transferring four of its offices, including those overseeing elementary and secondary education, postsecondary education, and special education. The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) advanced it 13 to 9 on July 30, and it awaits a floor vote.

In the House, a package of 10 bills approved by the Committee on Education and the Workforce on July 15 would codify most of the existing agreements and, unlike the agreements themselves, transfer ED’s statutory responsibilities for those functions to the receiving agencies. Neither measure has passed its chamber.

This congressional activity comes amid recent press reports that another 64 ED employees will move to other federal agencies, including 52 workers in the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education and Office of Postsecondary Education, who will be transferred to DOL. Last month the Office of Management and Budget also appeared to move the 21st CCLC, Title I, and other Elementary and Secondary Education program accounts from being listed under Education to now being listed under DOL’s Employment and Training Administration. 

The Senate: A bipartisan push to limit IAAs

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) has led the Senate effort, working with Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) on S. 5046, which would prohibit ED from transferring four offices to another federal agency without a new act of Congress: the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS), the Office of Postsecondary Education (OPE), the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE), and the Office of Indian Education (OIE). OESE is the office that houses 21st CCLC, so this bill, if enacted, would directly block the kind of transfer that moved 21st CCLC's day-to-day administration to DOL last November. This legislative effort comes in addition to language that was included in the FY2026 spending bill that passed in January 2026 which fell short of fully blocking administrative actions affecting ED’s operations. That spending bill did include report language raising concerns about shifting education programs and responsibilities to other agencies but did not prohibit those moves, instead instituting a series of briefings and oversight requirements. 

The House: A push to make the transfers permanent

Two weeks before that Senate markup, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce moved in the opposite direction. On July 15, the committee approved a package of ten Republican-led bills, largely along party lines, that would codify ED’s existing interagency agreements into permanent law rather than unwind them. The most relevant of the 10 is H.R. 9610, the Less Bureaucracy, Better K-12 Education Act, sponsored by Rep. Mark Harris (R-N.C.), which would permanently transfer to the secretary of labor all of the functions the secretary of education currently exercises over OESE, the same office S. 5046 would protect. That would include 21st CCLC along with the rest of the K-12 formula and discretionary grant programs already reassigned to DOL under last November's agreement. The bill passed committee 19 to 16. Notably, the package stopped short of codifying the transfer of special education and civil rights functions. The House bill also would freeze federal staffing levels on programs like 21st CCLC.

What this means for 21st CCLC

For now, 2 chambers of Congress are pulling in opposite directions on the same underlying question: whether the office that governs 21st CCLC, and the rest of the programs shifted through interagency agreements, should be pulled back under ED or permanently reassigned elsewhere. Neither bill looks likely to reach the president's desk in its current form. The House package would need 60 votes in a Senate that has already signaled it won't provide them, and the Senate's bipartisan bill would need buy-in from a House majority that just voted the opposite way. The House or Senate language could still be included in a final FY2027 Labor, HHS, Education spending bill. That said, neither the House nor Senate version of the FY2027 continuing resolution has any language addressing the interagency agreements. In the meantime, the practical reality for local 21st CCLC grantees is continuity: funding keeps flowing through DOL under the existing agreement, even as its long-term legal status remains genuinely unresolved. The Afterschool Alliance will continue to track both bills as they move, and will keep the field updated on what either outcome would mean for 21st CCLC's home in the federal government.