KENOVA, W.Va. (AP) - When Taylor Justice graduated from Marshall University in 2014, she felt relieved to start her teaching career almost debt-free.
Scholarships covered most of the tuition for her undergraduate degree. Money was tight, but manageable.
Still, financial help was always welcome. Early into college, Justice heard about a grant program through the U.S. Department of Education that awarded students up to $4,000 annually if they committed to working in high-need fields in low-income areas for four years after graduation - the TEACH grant.
“I just needed a little bit more to get by, for extra expenses so I could live more independently,” Justice said. “Committing that four years, it’s what I wanted to do anyway - it wasn’t going to change my life at all.”
A West Virginia native who grew up attending Wayne County schools, Justice knew she wanted to stay in the state after graduation.
Since 2010, all 55 counties in West Virginia have been considered low-income areas with a high need for qualified teachers, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Postsecondary Education. In addition to this, nearly all subjects - from elementary education to specialized fields like counseling and adult education - are in high demand.
Anyone teaching the listed subjects in the state would qualify for the grant. Failure to meet the requirements of the TEACH grant, however, means any money received through the program would be immediately converted to loans, with interest.
Justice wasn’t worried, and she was able to receive an extra $3,600 annually to make ends meet through the grant. After earning her bachelor’s degree, Justice began teaching elementary school in Kenova.
In 2016, she received a letter from FedLoan saying her grants were being converted to loans after she didn’t turn in paperwork on time. She missed a notification in her “paperless inbox,” a messaging function she didn’t even know existed.
Literally overnight, Justice accumulated about $15,000 in debt she wasn’t expecting.
Justice called FedLoan, the private company hired by the Department of Education to manage grants like the TEACH grant, and was told clearly there was nothing she could do, even though she was meeting all the requirements of the grant.
She could file an appeal, FedLoan told her, but there was no way it would be granted - no one else’s ever had been.
“The only part of the deal I did not meet was turning in a piece of paper late, one time. That mistake cost me thousands of dollars,” Justice said. “I was ill. I cried a lot. I was mad at myself at that moment.”
Justice isn’t alone struggling with the unexpected debt. In March, NPR reported on two different teachers in two different states whose TEACH grant stories aptly reflect Justice’s. Justice’s sister sent her the story, and she was shocked when she read it.
“I’m sure there are people out there who received TEACH and didn’t have these problems, but I’m not one of them, and neither were these people,” Justice said.
A study by the Department of Education found that at least one-third of TEACH grant recipients surveyed said they were meeting the requirements for the program, but had their grants converted to loans anyway.
The U.S. Department of Education and FedLoan did not respond to requests for comment. NPR reported a statement from FedLoan saying the company “remains committed to resolving outstanding borrower issues while following the U.S. Department of Education’s policies, procedures, and regulations as mandated by the Agency’s federal servicing contracts.”
Based on her interactions with FedLoan, Justice is not convinced anything will be adjusted or fixed on her behalf.
“Unless there is actually something illegal going on that we could be forgiven for, or some sort of change in the future, I don’t see how I wouldn’t be stuck paying this off, even though I’ve done almost everything I said I would do,” Justice said.
Since the 2016-17 school year, 644 college students in West Virginia have received the TEACH grant, said Shelli Dronsfield, director of communications at the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission. Most of these students - 430 of them - attended Marshall.
Justice said she applied for the grant after hearing about her friend’s sister - who also went to Marshall - receiving it.
The grant was an added incentive for Justice to remain in the state she loved. Now, with thousands of dollars of unexpected debt looming over her, she isn’t so sure of her decision.
West Virginia ranks 48th in the country for teacher wages. Debt, Justice said, wouldn’t be as big of a deal if she were making enough money to keep up with payments and still live comfortably.
“I teach full-time, and if I wasn’t married with a combined income, I would be strapped. The feeling that I couldn’t be independent if I needed to be - it’s disheartening,” Justice said. “I didn’t get into teaching for money, but money is a reality of life. I’d never say yes, for sure that I would leave (West Virginia), but I consider it more now than I ever have in the past year.”
The TEACH grant, said Kristin Anderson, spokeswoman for the West Virginia Department of Education, is one way to incentivize highly qualified educators to come here and stay.
“The TEACH grant is something we see as a positive,” Anderson said. “It’s an effort that helps us keep people we need here.”
State agencies, however, have no control on how the grants are administered, and therefore are not able to help when things go wrong. Anderson said colleges and universities that are TEACH certified work directly with the U.S. Department of Education.
Matthew Campbell, an assistant professor of mathematics education at West Virginia University, has spent a lot of time studying how West Virginia can improve recruitment and retention rates among teachers.
Campbell acknowledged that West Virginia agencies may not be equipped to deal with problems accompanying TEACH grants, but added that there should be an effort at the state level to offset costs for teachers in some way. The best option, he believes, would be similar programs that are operated locally.
“This would allow for establishing procedures and expectations that better meet our goal of incentivizing staying in West Virginia to teach, and not having it be a bait-and-switch, with people unexpectedly holding the bill because of a clerical error,” Campbell said.
He said one of the biggest issues that affect recruitment and retention in West Virginia is, unsurprisingly, compensation. This means more than just a person’s salary. Compensation also includes programs that could subsidize the costs for those pursuing careers in education and commit to them in West Virginia.
The TEACH grant, while a good example of a program like this, is not a lot of money, especially for the work that has to go into applying and upkeep. Its convoluted process can make it more of a challenge than a benefit, Campbell said.
A federal program like TEACH, he said, shouldn’t be something West Virginians depend on.
“Investing more purposefully in ways that support teachers throughout their careers would help,” Campbell said.
Justice has wanted to be a teacher since she was in the eighth grade.
She loves the feeling she gets when watching one of her third graders understand something, and knowing she had a role in helping them get there.
“I look at them all the time and I wonder, ’What are you going to do when you grow up? You’re going to be so great,’” she said. “There’s so much I love about teaching. I leave every day knowing this is what I’m meant to do.”
After she earned her bachelor’s degree, she returned to Marshall for her master’s degree, and continued receiving the TEACH grant - even after the challenges she faced.
“I said, ’Next time I’ll be better.’ It was easy to just continue getting it, and I needed the help - I didn’t have as much of my tuition covered for grad school,” she said.
Last week, she received an email informing her that she was not meeting requirements for the program. She was livid.
But after calling FedLoan again, it turns out the company had a difficult time reading a date she wrote on the paper.
“I didn’t think that conversation was going to go as well as it did. I thought they were going to tell me my grants from grad school were going to be converted, and I don’t know what I would have done,” Justice said. “I’m being careful, but I’m still afraid of this. I already don’t make very much money - please don’t drain me anymore. That’s how it feels.”
Justice doesn’t regret going into teaching. She does regret the TEACH grant, though.
She looks at her husband’s friends who teach in other states, and she knows how much more money she could be making and how much more manageable her debt could be. But it’s hard, she said, to let go of her West Virginia roots.
“I have double what I should have had to pay back. The amount of loans I should have had - people would have died to have that amount of loans,” Justice said. “It’d be hard for me to leave - to go that far. This is my roots, I don’t ever want to leave, but it’s hard sometimes when you feel like you’re staying to give back and you feel unappreciated.”
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Information from: The Charleston Gazette-Mail, http://wvgazettemail.com.
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