A student loan forgiveness program is celebrated at Philly City Hall

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!

The head of the U.S. Department of Education, Miguel Cardona, came to Philadelphia on Thursday to hear how a student loan forgiveness program for public employees is working.

The Saving on Valuable Education (SAVE) plan is designed for those working in civil service to have student loans forgiven after paying their debt for 10 years.

“The people are what make the city and the people here care about their city, they care about their community,” Cardona said. “So when I think about public service loan forgiveness, it’s communities like this one that really gets stronger when you implement it right.”

The eight people who spoke at the discussion collectively had about a million dollars in student loans forgiven. One of those people was Myeisha Wheeler, who told her story about how every time she had a loan due she took more courses in order to get a deferment for her debt.

Wheeler said it took some time, but the program resulted in $293,000 in debt canceled.

Venise Whittaker is a social worker who had $150,000 in student loans forgiven.

“I had no ambition at all for my life in the long run, I was going to work until I died, pretty much,” Whittaker said. “I sit here today debt-free.”

Natasha Brown had $160,000 of student debt forgiven. She also went back to school and got another degree to prevent making payments, but it also made her debt grow.

“Once I saw it removed from my credit report, I believed it,” she said.

Brown is now able to make monthly payments on her other bills and help support her family, especially her father, who had a stroke about a year ago and needs medical assistance.

Cardona stressed the program was far from a giveaway and added that hard-working city employees are taking salary cuts to dedicate their lives to municipal service. He said that by paying off their education debt, they will spend that money on their families, buying a home or putting away money for retirement.

The Department of Education this week began emailing tens of millions of student loan recipients options to have some, or all, of their debts canceled under the new student debt proposal.

The proposal has yet to be finalized and has been in progress after the Supreme Court vacated President Biden’s $400 billion plan to erase or reduce federal student loan debt.

The email does not guarantee eligibility, but Cardona called it a “step forward” in the administration’s promise to deliver loan forgiveness to borrowers who have been “failed by a broken system.”