McCollum was not alone. NPR’s reporting over the past year found that the same thing was happening to thousands of other public school teachers.
NPR Ed
The problem at the heart of the TEACH Grant story is that small paperwork issues often triggered this catastrophic consequence. In order to qualify for a grant, aspiring teachers agreed to teach for four years in a low-income public school. But the rules also required that teachers send in a form every year to prove they were actually teaching.
The forms were often due over the summer when teachers and principals, who had to sign them, were away on vacation. And if teachers sent in this annual form even one day late, missing a signature or date, or with any other little problem, their TEACH Grants would be turned into loans, with interest. And this process was irreversible. Teachers were told their loans could not be converted back to grants.
For two years, the debt haunted McCollum and her young family. They went into forbearance – a brief reprieve but with interest accruing. They even moved to a smaller, less expensive house to prepare for what now seemed inevitable. No one was listening. Fair or not, the debt was growing and would need to be repaid.
And then, just a few Saturdays ago, another letter arrived in the mail. McCollum opened it in the car, her husband driving, their young son Louther chirping in the back seat. A much-needed spring break vacation lay ahead.
„Do you see that word, ‚Congratulations!‘?“ McCollum said, smiled and laughed. It was official: That debt, now $24,000, had finally been turned back into grants.
„Two years of us fighting this,“ McCollum said. „We won,“ she tells NPR. „We raised our voices and they finally heard us. Disbelief followed by a relief like I have not felt before.“
