Dear John,
The coronavirus has affected every aspect of our lives. From canceled plans and family vacations, to closures of our workplaces and businesses, to lost jobs and income -- many of our heads are spinning from this rapidly changing health crisis and the drastic changes that have occurred in our lives in the matter of a few short weeks.
This is also a trying time for schools and students, as they adjust to remote learning and cancel milestone events. These unprecedented changes are emotionally and logistically challenging, and will have a particularly intense effect for many low-income students, children with disabilities, and students experiencing homelessness. These students, and the schools that they rely on, need our urgent help.
That’s why I wanted to reach out to make sure you know about the different tools that were included in the Senate’s $2 trillion economic relief bill that are available to you and the schools in your community.
For students pursing a higher education:
- If you have federal student loans, your monthly federal student loan payments will be suspended until September. During this time, no additional interest will accrue. This is a critical step to provide badly needed economic relief for millions of borrowers.
- If you participate in a federal work study program, but that work has been disrupted by the coronavirus, you will still receive your payments.
- If you drop out of school because of the coronavirus, this academic term won’t count toward your lifetime subsidized loan eligibility or Pell Grant eligibility.
- If you drop out of school because of the coronavirus, your grades will not affect your grant or student loan eligibility. You are also not required to return unused Pell funding or federal student loans should you drop out of school because of the coronavirus.
- If you are a TEACH Grant recipient and you are unable to complete a full year of teaching because of the coronavirus, your partial year of service will count as a full year for your TEACH Grant obligations or Teacher Loan Forgiveness.
Another critical piece of this puzzle is keeping our higher education institutions afloat as they grapple with a very challenge: a combination of climbing technology costs associated with distance learning, and a simultaneous loss of tuition revenue. Our K-12 schools also need help responding to the coronavirus and transitioning to remote learning strategies.
For schools:
- An estimated $32.6 million is included for the Governor’s Fund for use in Oregon, which will provide emergency support to K-12, higher education, or education entities that the governor determines to have been most significantly impacted by the coronavirus to help them continue to provide education and instruction and support functionality of the institution.
- An estimated $121 million is included for the Elementary and Secondary School Fund for use in Oregon. This funding will assist in the coordination of preparedness and response to the coronavirus, provide principals with resources to meet individual school needs, and fund activities to ensure that minority students, students who are low-income, have disabilities, are English learners, are experiencing homelessness, and are foster youth all receive quality educational instruction. The funding will also help schools provide mental health services and support, summer learning and supplemental education, as well as operations services and staff employment.
I will be updating my website with available resources and links to application materials in the coming days, and you can bookmark my coronavirus resource website here to check back for those materials
Every student in Oregon -- regardless of where they live, what their parents’ jobs are, or the color of their skin -- deserves a top-notch education that will set them up for a lifetime of success. Our commitment to that principle is critical, and I’m going to keep fighting to make sure our students and their families remain a priority as we address this public health crisis.
All my best,
Jeff |
