Teachers unions are raising alarm bells about President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the nation’s schools – Linda McMahon, the former CEO of Stamford-based World Wrestling Entertainment.

The Connecticut Education Association fears that McMahon will carry out Trump’s promise to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, but Gov. Ned Lamont said he is not worried.

The woman who helped build WWE into a wrestling empire may be an unusual choice to lead the nation’s schools. But Trump said McMahon is the perfect choice to overhaul the Department of Education.

“We will send education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort," Trump said in a statement on Tuesday.

The president-elect has repeatedly pledged to shut down the agency.

“One other thing I’ll be doing very early in the administration is closing the Department of Education in Washington, D.C., and sending all education and education work and needs back to the states,” he said on social media in October 2023.

McMahon has little experience in the classroom, except for a brief stint on the State Board of Education and several years as a trustee at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield. Her lack of education background has teachers unions nervous.

“Does she have the understanding and experience to really be able to feed those programs and hold them together?” said CEA President Kate Dias. “I’m not quite sure what the goal is for Mrs. McMahon's appointment is. If it is truly the destruction of the Department of Education, that's a different set of skills, I suppose.”

McMahon headed the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term and unsuccessfully ran for U.S. Senate twice in 2010 and 2012.

A lot of money at stake for Connecticut.

The State Department of Education gets $394.5 million per year from Washington, excluding COVID pandemic funds. That’s 10.5% of their entire budget. The feds send millions more to local school districts.

That money pays for special education, career training and teaching foreign students English, among other programs.

“We question the future of these popular ideas and more if the Trump administration follows through with plans to close the Department of Education, leaving in doubt a federal-funding lifeline that disproportionately goes to children in need, children with disabilities and young adults who are the first in their families to go to college,” said American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten.

McMahon is likely to shift money away from public schools and into private school vouchers.

“As Secretary of Education, Linda will fight tirelessly to expand ‘Choice’ to every State in America, and empower parents to make the best Education decisions for their families,” Trump said on Tuesday.

The incoming president has also vowed to crack down on states like Connecticut that allow transgender athletes to compete without restrictions.

“Rather than indoctrinating young people with inappropriate racial, sexual, and political material – which is what we’re doing now – our schools must be totally refocused to prepare our children to succeed in the world,” Trump said on the conservative news site Rumble.com last year.

In spite of Trump’s tough talk, Lamont said he is not worried.

“You’re not going to end the Department of Education. You can push it back into Health and Human Services, the way it was in the 70s. You're just sort of rearranging the deck chairs,” he said Tuesday. “You’re still going to have Title IX. You're still going to have the grants being made; that’s not going to go away. All they’re going to do is move it from one building to another.”

McMahon’s nomination also comes with legal controversy.

A new lawsuit accuses her and her husband of ignoring sexual abuse of teenage “ring boys.” Vince McMahon also faces a separate lawsuit alleging that he and others sexually assaulted a WWE employee.

Vince McMahon stepped down as WWE’s executive chairman shortly after. He has denied the allegations in both lawsuits.

Read the “ring boys” lawsuit:

Read the Janel Grant lawsuit. Many of the details are graphic in nature: