Rural America has long suffered from a “brain drain.” Many of the best and brightest youths from farms and small towns go off to college — only to later discover that they can’t afford to return home to the communities that spawned them.
The problem is that many college students today aren’t just acquiring knowledge. Soaring tuition means they’re also acquiring debt. And the need to pay off those debts can force recent graduates to take high-paying jobs in urban areas even if they’d rather return to their rural roots.
The House Education Committee can take a small but important step to strengthen rural Colorado next Thursday by approving state Rep. Cory Gardner’s House Bill 1255. It would allow the state CollegeInvest program to forgive student loans for teachers who bring needed skills to small rural schools.
Gerald Keefe, superintendent of schools in Kit Carson, is a strong supporter of Gardner’s bill. Kit Carson has 100 students spread between kindergarten and 12th grade. It has 17 teachers and other certified staff. A starting teacher in the district is paid $27,950 a year, considerably less than starting pay in most urban schools.
Those low starting salaries are offset by the fact that living costs, especially housing, are lower in Kit Carson than along the Front Range. But fixed student loan payments can still be a deal breaker for teachers interested in Kit Carson.
HB 1255 doesn’t create a new program, it merely amends the existing teacher loan forgiveness program to include more rural schools. Passed in 2001, the program allows CollegeInvest to forgive up to $2,000 for each of the first four years of teaching in a “qualified position.”
Most teachers who receive such loan forgiveness work in high-poverty urban schools. But the program doesn’t cover rural schools unless the largest population center in the district has fewer than 1,200 residents. This absurdly low cutoff disenfranchises most rural districts by counting small towns like Holyoke or Cheyenne Wells as urban metropolises.
Gardner’s bill simply raises the population cutoff to a more reasonable 5,000 residents. Keefe estimates more than 100 rural schools would benefit from Gardner’s bill — at a cost we estimate at less than than $100,000 over the next five years.
That’s a tiny price to pay for better schools and the more vibrant communities they will generate.
