PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Kelli Gray assumed she'd be paying her student loans until she died.
After getting an associate, bachelor and master's degree and attempting a Ph.D., her loans totaled $350,000 and her job as a social worker with the city of Philadelphia meant she'd never catch up.
Then, one day, she got a letter.
“It said, ‘Congratulations, thank you for being a public servant, your loan has been forgiven.’ I didn't believe it. I went on the FAFSA website. It was all zeros,” Gray said. She had benefited from the first student debt forgiveness program for public servants.
Gray shared her story with Vice President Kamala Harris at Cramp Elementary School Monday afternoon, where Harris announced the newest program: forgiveness for anyone who has been paying back undergraduate loans for 20 years or graduate loans for 25 years.
Tonya Cabeza was one of three city and school district employees who met with Harris Monday to illustrate the impact the latest round of student loan relief may have on the estimated 25 million eligible people.
Cabeza was the first in her family to go to college. Her parents were unable to help, so she took out loans for the entire four years. But after making payments for years, she still owed $40,000.
That is, until she opened an email one evening to find they'd been forgiven.
“We knew that things were changing for us. My life had changed and what I was able to give my children had changed,” she said.
Harris said the Biden-Harris Administration will keep finding ways to forgive student loans.
“We want to create incentives for people to acquire the kind of skills like the professionals at this table to do the work that they do that benefits so many others and benefits us as a nation,” Harris said.
The new rule must go through a public comment period and could take effect this fall.