Federal college loan forgiveness is an effective tool to reward workers who choose public service professions that are struggling to hire qualified candidates, U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.

“We need to make sure that we’re making the profession attractive,” Cardona said during a Wednesday morning visit at the National Education Association of New Hampshire in Concord, the state’s largest teacher’s union. “My public service loan forgiveness efforts and our efforts in the Biden-Harris administration is one part. We’re also fighting for competitive salaries in the profession.”

The public service loan forgiveness program was introduced in 2007 under the College Cost Reduction and Access Act to get more graduates into public service professions, such as educators, firefighters, police officers, veterans, and nurses.

After working with an eligible employer for 10 years and making 120 qualifying monthly payments on their student debt, the remaining debt is forgiven after the completion of this 10-year service.

Cardona said  he wanted to elevate the real-life stories of loan forgiveness recipients to put real faces to the policies that have benefited people in public service jobs.

“I want to know what it means when public service loan forgiveness, debt relief, impacts a life, impacts the family,” said Cardona.”When we talk about debt relief, know that for me, the passion is ensuring that we have educators that are in this profession that don’t have to work a second job to make ends meet.”

Sarah Burgess, an educator of 20 years, is one of 750,000 individuals who have reaped the benefits of the program. As a special education teacher at Hinsdale Middle School, she found relief when $17,000 of her undergraduate student loans were forgiven through the program.

Without that financial burden, she undertook a meaningful project — renovating her bathroom to make it more accessible for her husband, who lives with a disability.

“With the $17,000 gone, there are things I could do on my house,” said Burgess. “It’s an old house, but the original wood floor, it’s kind of coming apart. So I’d like to like to redo it. We finally just redid the bathroom so he doesn’t have to climb into a shower.”

State Rep. Kris Schultz, a Concord Democrat who was just elected to the City Council, said she had $21,000 in debt forgiven.

“It was life-changing,” said Schultz, who keeps a snapshot of the email confirming her loan forgiveness. “It’s enabled us to focus on other priorities and we’ve been slowly saving for a house. So that will be nice.”

Cardona also met with Lorri Hayes, UniServ director; Megan Tuttle, president of the NEA-NH; and Deb Howes, president of the American Federation of Teachers of New Hampshire.

With the presidential primary this month, Cardona is another member of President Joe Biden’s cabinet who has visited New Hampshire recently, even though Biden’s name will not be printed on the primary ballot.

After meeting with educators, Cardona was scheduled to meet with the students at Dartmouth College to discuss antisemitism and Islamophobia on college campuses amid the Israel-Hamas war.

A roundtable discussion including Jewish and Muslim students of recently launched Dartmouth Dialogues, an initiative to bridge political and personal divides was held at the college.