Student Loans and the People Who Run Our Schools
Walk into any school and you will find people who took on debt to be there. The third-grade teacher. The special education aide. The counselor, the librarian, the bus driver who has been running the same route for fifteen years. Student loans are not a college-age problem that resolves itself. For the workforce that runs our schools, the balance often follows them well into their careers.
Here is what the research says about that burden, why it reaches further into a school than most people realize, and what it looks like to actually do something about it.
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Teachers are borrowers, many long-term
The numbers are hard to look away from. According to the Learning Policy Institute’s 2025 analysis of federal data:
- 60 percent of teachers borrowed for their education.
- Nearly 40 percent still have outstanding student loans, with an average payment of $342 a month.
- Average balances for the class of 2020 ran $29,250 for a bachelor’s degree and $38,230 for a master’s, and teaching is a field that often requires the master’s.
- Nearly a third of teachers with loans still owe their entire original balance. For some with 16 to 20 years in the classroom, the debt has simply never gone away.
The weight is not evenly spread. Borrowing and repayment rates are highest among beginning teachers, special education teachers, and Black teachers, roughly 71 percent of whom took out loans. In other words, the debt lands hardest on the newest educators and the hardest-to-staff roles, exactly the people schools most need to keep.
It is not just a paycheck problem, it is a stay-or-go problem
More than 60 percent of teachers with student debt report feeling highly or very highly stressed about it, and about one in five work a second job to manage it. That stress does not stay at home. Teachers who feel squeezed by their loans are more likely to report job dissatisfaction and to think about leaving the profession entirely.
That matters for every school leader watching a staffing board. Student loan debt can discourage people from entering teaching, from pursuing the extra certification that would make them more valuable, and from staying long enough to become the veteran the building relies on. Support for student loans is not a perk. It is a retention strategy aimed squarely at the reasons good educators walk away.
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The debt reaches the whole building, not just the classroom
Here is the part that surprises most administrators. Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) does not care about job titles. It cares about the employer.
If a school qualifies as a government or 501(c)(3) nonprofit employer, then every full-time W-2 employee working at least 30 hours a week can be eligible for forgiveness after 120 qualifying payments. That means the path is open not only to teachers and administrators, but to:
- paraprofessionals and instructional aides
- counselors, nurses, and school psychologists
- librarians and instructional coaches
- custodial and maintenance staff
- food service workers
- bus drivers
- central office and support personnel
The cook who plates lunch and the driver who gets kids home are on the same forgiveness track as the principal. Most of them have no idea. That gap between who is eligible and who knows they are eligible is where a lot of money quietly goes unclaimed.
Why charter schools are in a strong position
Charter schools sit in an interesting spot. Public charters generally qualify for PSLF when the operator is a government entity or a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, so their staff can pursue forgiveness the same way district employees can. At the same time, charters often run leaner budgets and lean on younger staff, the group most likely to be carrying fresh debt.
We see this pattern up close. At one charter school we work with, a young teaching staff and a professional development budget that had to be trimmed for the year created a real tension: leadership wanted to help teachers with their loans but could not simply write bigger checks. The answer was not more money. It was making the existing dollars work harder, pairing coaching with a modest, tax-advantaged repayment contribution so teachers keep more of what they earn.
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What real support looks like
Helping educators with student loans comes down to two things that work best together.
- Coaching that turns confusion into a plan. The rules around repayment and forgiveness change constantly, and most borrowers have no way to know whether they are on the right plan or leaving money on the table. In our coaching sessions with school staff, that has meant showing one educator a path to roughly $97,000 in forgiveness, helping another cut an estimated 19 months off her timeline by certifying past employment, and moving a teacher from a $230 monthly payment down to $90 by switching to the right income-driven plan. Same salary. More money in their pocket, every month.
- An employer contribution that behaves like a raise. Employers can contribute up to $5,250 per year toward an employee’s student loans completely tax-free, to both the employer and the employee. Even a modest amount, say $100 a month, is $1,200 a year the employee keeps in full. Schools that add a repayment benefit commonly see retention climb. Paired with coaching, the contribution goes further, because the coaching makes sure every dollar is aimed at the fastest, cheapest path to payoff or forgiveness.
You do not have to choose the biggest version to make a difference. A small, well-designed benefit built on top of good coaching often does more for morale and retention than a larger one that no one understands how to use.
The takeaway for school leaders
The people who run your school are carrying debt, more of them than you probably think, and the ones feeling it most are your newest teachers and your hardest roles to fill. The tools to help already exist. Forgiveness is available to your whole staff, coaching turns it into a real plan, and a tax-free contribution stretches your budget instead of straining it.
If you lead a school, a charter network, or a district and want to understand what this could look like for your staff, book a free Clarity Call (https://savvyfi.co) and we will walk through it with you. And if you are part of a nonprofit collaborative or school purchasing consortium, mention it, you may be eligible for discounted services.
Because the people who take care of our kids deserve someone in their corner too.
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About SavvyFi: SavvyFi is a user-friendly fintech platform that makes it easy for employers to provide college savings and student loan benefits to their employees. Because the company’s platform is “zero-touch” to HR — without any complicated systems, integrations, or paperwork — SavvyFi unlocks education financing capabilities to even the smallest employers that would not otherwise be able to offer these benefits.
Disclosure: Third-party quotes shown may not be representative of the experience of all SavvyFi customers and do not represent a guarantee of future performance or success.
