Luján introduces bill to expand New Mexico's teacher loan forgiveness program

Sep. 19—U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Luján on Thursday introduced a bill that would expand student loan forgiveness for teachers working in early childhood education and "high-need" public schools.

The Loan Forgiveness for Educators Act calls for updating the Teacher Loan Forgiveness program by having the federal government make monthly federal student loan payments for qualifying educators and would forgive outstanding federal student loan debt after a teacher has been serving for five years.

The measure, intended to help recruit and retain educators, comes as districts in New Mexico and across the nation struggle with teacher shortages. It follows an announcement last month by President Joe Biden that the federal government will forgive up to $20,000 in federal student loan debt for all current borrowers earning less than $125,000 per year.

"Teachers, child care workers, and school leaders are faced with high costs of education and the financial burdens that follow, creating hurdles that have only contributed to workforce shortages impacting New Mexico and countless other states," Luján, a New Mexico Democrat, said in a statement. "... By strengthening and expanding this program, this bill will help increase educator recruitment and retention and ensure more children can access the quality education they deserve."

The bill's co-sponsor, U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, D-N.M., said the bill would help teachers return to their communities to serve.

"This bill will ease the financial burden of hard-working educators carrying high student loan debt and break down one of the biggest barriers for becoming an educator," Leger Fernández said in a statement. "Serving our students shouldn't require educators to take on excessive debt. We want to grow our teachers from the communities they serve."

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham threw her support behind the bill, noting it was in step with her own efforts to increase funding for New Mexico's Teacher Loan Repayment Program.

The interest in student-loan relief peaked last year as the New Mexico Higher Education Department received almost 500 new applications for debt relief, three times as many as in 2020, according to a release from the department.

American Federation of Teachers New Mexico President Whitney Holland said the bill would be "life-changing" for her and educators all over New Mexico. Holland, a former elementary school teacher, has $30,000 in student debt.

"We have a lot of new teachers entering the profession with a lot of debt," she said. "And also we have older teachers who are still paying off their debt or have co-signed [loans] for their own children. So they're stuck in this cycle where there's no end and no easy way out."

An average of 8 percent of teachers leave the profession every year, according to the National Center for Education statistics, and as many as 50 percent of teachers leave within the first five years of their career.

In recent years, more than 50 percent of teachers nationwide said they were considering leaving the profession following the demands and stressors during the coronavirus pandemic.

Cutting down the window for debt forgiveness could be an incentive for many more to stay in the field and passing the bill could lead to improved education outcomes and teacher working conditions in New Mexico, Holland said.

The state recently raised the average teacher's salary to $64,000 a year — the highest in the Southwest — and cut down on paperwork and other administrative burdens for educators. Districts have also invested in efforts to retain teachers, such as Santa Fe Public Schools' district-run day care for educators with children, the first of its kind in the state.

Santa Fe Public Schools Superintendent Hilario "Larry" Chavez said Luján's measure would provide "a much-needed avenue for attracting and retaining teachers, which is critically important during this time of teacher shortages. Addressing and resolving student loan payments will further New Mexico as a destination for quality teaching and learning. The federal legislation fully complements SFPS' efforts to ease living expenses for teachers."

Holland said the legislation is another step toward improving working conditions for teachers, which in turn creates a better learning environment for students.

"It changes the narrative," Holland said. "Instead of 'If I make it to 10 years, I get a reward,' it approaches education like a package. Our salaries are getting better and our health care is getting better. It hasn't been that way for a long time."