{"id":9538,"date":"2024-01-10T19:47:01","date_gmt":"2024-01-10T19:47:01","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","slug":"Education-Secretary-meets-teachers-and-public-education-unions-in-New-Hampshire-53649897\/","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/?p=9538","title":{"rendered":"Education Secretary highlights impacts of public service loan forgiveness in New Hampshire"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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FILE – Education Secretary Miguel Cardona speaks with students during a visit to Towson University, Nov. 2, 2023, in Towson, Md. Cardona plans to meet Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2024, with students at Dartmouth College to discuss antisemitism and Islamophobia on college campuses amid the the Israel-Hamas war.(AP Photo\/Julia Nikhinson, File)<\/figcaption><\/figure>
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Education Secretary Eric Cardona meets with educators and representatives in Concord to discuss student-loan forgiveness programs.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
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Deb Howes, left, president of the American Federation of Teachers – New Hampshire, and state Rep. Kris Schultz.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/figure>

Federal college loan forgiveness is an effective tool to reward workers who choose public service professions that are struggling to hire qualified candidates,\u00a0U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to make sure that we\u2019re making the profession attractive,\u201d Cardona said during a Wednesday morning\u00a0visit at the National Education Association of\u00a0New Hampshire in Concord, the state\u2019s largest teacher\u2019s union. \u201cMy public service loan forgiveness efforts and our efforts in the Biden-Harris administration is one part. We\u2019re also fighting for competitive salaries in the profession.\u201d<\/p>\n

The public service loan forgiveness\u00a0program was introduced in 2007 under the College Cost Reduction and Access Act to get more graduates into public service professions, such as educators, firefighters, police officers, veterans, and nurses.<\/p>\n

After working with an eligible employer for 10 years and making 120 qualifying monthly payments on their student debt, the remaining debt is forgiven after the completion of this 10-year service.<\/p>\n

Cardona said\u00a0 he wanted to elevate the real-life stories of loan forgiveness recipients to put real faces to the policies that have benefited people in public service jobs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to know what it means when public service loan forgiveness, debt relief, impacts a life, impacts the family,\u201d said Cardona.\u201dWhen we talk about debt relief, know that for me, the passion is ensuring that we have educators that are in this profession that don\u2019t have to work a second job to make ends meet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sarah Burgess, an educator of 20 years, is one of 750,000 individuals who have reaped the benefits of the program. As a special education teacher at Hinsdale Middle School, she found relief when $17,000 of her undergraduate student loans were forgiven through the program.<\/p>\n

Without that financial burden, she undertook a meaningful project \u2014 renovating her bathroom to make it more accessible for her husband, who lives with a disability.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the $17,000 gone, there are things I could do on my house,\u201d said Burgess. \u201cIt\u2019s an old house, but the original wood floor, it\u2019s kind of coming apart. So I\u2019d like to like to redo it. We finally just redid the bathroom so he doesn\u2019t have to climb into a shower.\u201d<\/p>\n

State Rep. Kris Schultz, a Concord Democrat who was just elected to the City Council, said she had $21,000 in debt forgiven.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was life-changing,\u201d said\u00a0Schultz, who keeps\u00a0a snapshot of the email confirming her loan forgiveness. \u201cIt\u2019s enabled us to focus on other priorities and we\u2019ve been slowly saving for a house. So that will be nice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cardona also met with Lorri Hayes, UniServ director;\u00a0Megan Tuttle, president of the NEA-NH; and Deb Howes, president of the American Federation of Teachers of\u00a0New Hampshire.<\/p>\n

With the presidential primary this month, Cardona is another member of President Joe Biden\u2019s cabinet who has visited New Hampshire recently, even though Biden\u2019s name will not be printed on the primary ballot.<\/p>\n

After meeting with educators, Cardona was scheduled to meet with the students at Dartmouth College to discuss antisemitism and Islamophobia on college campuses amid the Israel-Hamas war.<\/p>\n

A roundtable\u00a0discussion including Jewish and Muslim students of recently launched Dartmouth Dialogues, an initiative to bridge political and personal divides was held at the college.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Federal college loan forgiveness is an effective tool to reward workers who choose public service professions that are struggling to hire qualified candidates,\u00a0U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.\u201cWe need to make sure that we\u2019re making the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":553,"featured_media":9539,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":false,"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","_newspack_byline_active":true,"_newspack_byline":"by [Author id=553]Sruthi Gopalakrishnan[\/Author] Monitor staff","newspack_content_restriction_is_exempt":false,"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[508,12],"tags":[128,24,438,505,268],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[506],"class_list":["post-9538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-headlines-cm","category-town-city-government","tag-education-nh","tag-facebook","tag-loan","tag-paywall","tag-pslf","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/42663743-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/553"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9538"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9540,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9538\/revisions\/9540"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9538"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fnewspack_spnsrs_tax&post=9538"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=9538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}