Perkins Loan Forgiveness for Librarians?

Imagine if the federal government forgave your entire Perkins student loan? That’s what the House and Senate are proposing to attract more librarians to the field—especially in low-income areas.

Filed by Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) and Congressman Xavier Becerra (D-CA), the LIBRARIAN Act would apply to all full-time librarians with MLS degrees and who have worked in low-income areas for the last five years. That means librarians in Title I schools and public librarians who serve neighborhoods with one or more Title I schools would qualify for forgiveness. Perkins loans are low-interest, federally backed loans for undergraduate and graduate students.

This is how it would work: 15 percent of a librarians’ student loan would be canceled for each of the first two years of service, 20 percent for each of the third and fourth years of service, and 30 percent for the fifth year of service. At the end of five years, the entire loan would be wiped clean.

A similar proposal was first introduced in 2005 as part of amendments to the Higher Education Act, but the House and Senate couldn’t agree on the language, Reed says. Melanie Anderson, assistant director of government relations for the American Library Association (ALA), says this time it’s different because there’s bipartisan support.

ALA plans to make the LIBRARIAN Act a “key message” for National Library Legislative Day on May 1, when librarians nationwide visit Washington, DC, to lobby legislators to support libraries, Anderson adds.

“I think librarians play a very crucial role in education. School librarians are undervalued in terms of their contributions to education,” says Reed, a key player in the passage of the 2001 Improving Literacy Through School Libraries program, the first time in about 30 years that federal funds were solely devoted to school library materials.

“Just having books on the shelves [isn’t] as important as having very well-trained librarians,” says Reed, emphasizing the importance of media specialists to student achievement. “Youngsters get access to so much stuff on the Internet, and there has to be someone to give them an idea of how to make judgments about the quality and accuracy of material.”

The proposed legislation couldn’t have come at a better time: 25 percent of U.S. school libraries lack state-certified media specialists, and the situation is expected to worsen as many librarians reach retirement age. Based on 1990 census data, almost 58 percent of librarians are expected to reach the age of 65 by 2019.

The legislation is expected to reach the floor of the House and Senate sometime in June, and sponsors are hoping for passage of a final bill this year.