NEWNAN ― The U.S. Department of Education announced Friday it’s hitting the pause button on some of the harsher consequences for people who have fallen behind on their federal student loan repayments.
The department said in a press release that it will temporarily stop involuntary collections, like wage garnishment and withholding tax refunds for borrowers in default. Officials say they’re pausing ahead of big changes to the repayment system, and they want borrowers to have a fair shot at using the new options before being hit with collections again.
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon addressed the issue at a stop in Newnan on Friday. She said federal officials are trying to simplify repayments by developing two plans borrowers can choose from.
“We don’t want people to be in default,” McMahon said. “Those folks that are in default can’t buy houses, can’t buy cars. What’s the affordable way for them to be able to pay the money back and get back on a good program? That’s the goal.”
McMahon made the comments while visiting the Coweta County school district’s Central Educational Center, a charter school that specializes in career training. They kept her busy. McMahon visited a dental assisting lab, where Coweta students and some from West Georgia Technical College were practicing skills like reviewing X-rays and examining teeth. She sat for a student-run interview in the CEC’s production lab and tried her hand at a flight simulator in the center’s aviation lab.
“This is an incredibly impressive facility, and this is a model that I would really like to see replicated, not only throughout the state of Georgia, but around the country,” McMahon said.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
McMahon was joined by an entourage of elected officials, from Newnan Mayor James Shepherd to Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who’s currently running for governor.
The trip is part of McMahon’s “Returning Education to the States Tour.” She said she’s visited 27 states so far. President Donald Trump has tasked his cabinet with visiting as many states as possible, McMahon said, to see what is happening “on the ground.”
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
“My goal is to visit as many kinds of schools, many kinds of programs, and put together tool kits and recommendations so that by the end of the (president’s) term, when we have returned education to the states and the Department of Education is no longer sitting in bureaucracy … then states have this tool kit to refer to and to adopt,” she said.
Trump announced plans to dismantle the Education Department shortly after taking office nearly a year ago. Returning authority to the states will give local officials more autonomy, McMahon said. But some educators and parents have been worried about what that means for federal education funding that some districts rely on.
“Before there was a Department of Education, Title One funding (for low-income students) flowed,” she said. “It (went) exactly where it was supposed to go … and as we move different programs into different agencies, then that money will flow the very same way … it will just go through a different agency, less bureaucracy.”
The department’s Office of Civil Rights has handled discrimination complaints. The Trump administration hollowed out the office, but recently brought staff members back to handle the mounting complaints.
McMahon also addressed concerns about the Office of Civil Rights disappearing.
“That program will continue wherever it resides,” she said. “(It could come) out of the Department of Justice, which could be a likely place for the OCR to land. That’s not been fully decided yet, but it’s one of the things that we are looking at.”
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
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