During a roundtable discussion earlier this month, two NEA members told Education Secretary Miguel Cardona what fixing the badly broken Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program has meant to them.
“I opened the letter and it said zero. And I said ‘noooo,’” recounted Jamie Walker-Sallis, an equity innovator in Davenport, Iowa, public schools. “I went over to my computer to double-check online, and it said zero! I was like, ‘is this real?’ I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I hadn’t owed a little bit. It was just shy of $100,000.”
“For 10 years, I held my breath,” said Greg Cechak, a sixth-grade teacher in Pennsylvania. He finally got relief in January, when he learned that more than $39,000 of his student debt had been forgiven.
Since October, the Department of Education has approved $6.8 billion in loan forgiveness for 113,000 borrowers—and the number continues to grow. In contrast, the Trump/DeVos administration denied 98 percent of the applications filed and forgave just 16,000 borrowers in four years.
Last week, for the first time in more than two years, members of NEA’s Board of Directors came to Washington and met face-to-face with senators, representatives, and their staffs. They pushed for action on two additional issues of great importance to our members: the educator shortage and the need to protect LGBTQ+ students from bullying and harassment.
In solidarity,
Marc Egan
Government Relations Director
National Education Association
More than three-quarters of women—half the American workforce and nearly 80 percent of educators—will be pregnant and employed at some point in their lives.
Reimagine public schools as community hubs committed to meeting the needs of the whole child with integrated support services, expanded and enriched learning opportunities, and family and community engagement.
CHEER: Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) introduced the Babies over Billionaires Act (H.R. 7502) to help ensure that the wealthiest Americans pay their fair of taxes. It would, among other things,
treat the growth in a person’s stock and other assets as taxable income each year—similar to the way wages are taxed.
CHEER: Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) introduced the Judicial Ethics and Anti-Corruption Act (H.R. 7706), which would reform the judicial recusal process, impose a code of conduct on the Supreme Court, and ban federal judges from owning individual stock.
