Though the plan presents a long-term vision, through 2022, some of its contents were presented in a 14-page presentation to employees in February shortly after the department’s budget requests were released. And last week, the department announced it would reassign its budget director, the first move toward disbanding the budget office. The decision was made over the opposition of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, according to Politico. Several other staff changes were announced for 2019.

Some department employees denounced the move as an effort to dismantle an agency that would provide a critical check on the department’s overhaul plans, but other experts said it made sense.

“Budget offices, because they have so much power and institutional knowledge, can be seen as obstacles by reform-minded government leaders,” said Andy Smarick, a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “Many new government officials think they’ll only have to fight policy battles, when in fact there are lots of ways, including in the budget process, for their efforts to get scuttled.”

The plan aligns with measures Ms. DeVos has taken to shrink her agency, which she has described as bloated. She has shed hundreds of regulations, and hundreds of staff through attrition and buyouts.

For the most part, Ms. DeVos’s restructuring plan involves consolidating offices, such as merging the office that oversees charter and private schools with the main office that oversees elementary and secondary education in public schools. The plan would eliminate the Office of the Under Secretary, a position that has helped shape higher education policy, and create a new Office of Lifelong Learning. It would also reduce the number of political appointees.

The proposal also seeks to acquire several programs run by the Department of Labor. The department proposed to take over adult and unemployed worker programs run by the Labor Department, and to redirect the funding for those programs to federal Pell grants so that unemployed workers can enroll in higher education and vocational programs. The department would acquire an “out-of-school youth” program from the Labor Department, as well as a program that helps reintegrate ex-prisoners.

Details of the plan surfaced amid a bitter contract dispute between the DeVos administration and the union that represents the department’s 3,900 employees. Union leaders believe the contract gutted all protections that would allow its members to defend themselves in the department’s overhaul.