Student urges someone to support public service loan forgiveness in a specific county

 Dear whomever it concerns, 

It’s better when you figure out the name of the person to whom your letter ought to be addressed if you were to actually send it.

My name is _____________ and I wanted to talk to you about the Student Loan Forgiveness for Social Workers. Specifically I would like to talk about the PSLF, which helps public service workers by giving them college loan forgiveness. I want you to push for getting this policy approved for Macon County Students. I believe it is important that social workers and public service workers can get help with their school, as they have gotten their degree to help their community. As we all know, public service workers do not get paid much; teachers, social workers, and anyone who works for the community they are in does not get paid as much as they deserve. 

Why is that? They work overtime, that most of the time they are not even paid extra for their long hours? On top of everything that they work for, they also have to get the money together for their student loans, but students pay the same  This is going to make people not want to go into being a social worker or a public service worker and then we will not have any. We need to help the ones who are helping our community and our society’s future. 

I believe that if we make this policy a reality in Macon County, we will help the Public service workers, and have more help in school, DCFS and all of that. So please, consider this and help with our society’s future. 

Thank You,

_____________

You are suggesting that Macon County provide scholarships for students who, after graduating from local high schools, earn degrees in social work and other forms of public service (teacher education, I suppose), and these scholarships would be modeled on the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) policy, which forgives remaining balances on federal direct loans for education if a person who has debt from such loans has made 120 payments on their direct loan while earning an income from a qualified employer (qualified employers are mostly in government, which is why this is a “public service” policy). 

As a federal policy, PSLF is available to all students, including those who reside in Macon County. Is it your intention that the County Board in Macon County (or perhaps the City Government in Decatur) should offer college loans to students from Macon County, and then forgive the balance on those loans if a recipient of such a loan has resided in Macon County and worked for a public entity in Macon County for a total of ten years? 

It’s a very interesting idea: that a body of local government might get into the college lending business, supporting high school graduates and residents in the jurisdiction of the local government to earn university degrees and then stay in the jurisdiction after earning those degrees. Presumably the local government body would work with some sort of coalition of local banks and credit unions, who would set up the lending process and maintain the record-tracking. I could see this being an interesting policy that might help retain talent and innovation in localities that suffer from brain-drain as educated young adults flee the area and move to Chicago or out-of-state. This policy might also help recruit nurses, social workers, school teachers, law enforcement workers, emergency medical services workers, and so forth, if any of those types of occupation were having difficulties recruiting and retaining employees. 

You would certainly want to write a letter with a little more clarity and detail, to help your audience understand what exactly you are suggesting. What you have done well in the letter is convey a sense that many professionals in public service are offering their diligent effort and expertise in the workplace, but they are not enjoying the respect or compensation that would encourage them to continue doing so, and in fact, such work is becoming less attractive.  That point does help persuade your audience that something should be done. You might have explored why offering locally-sourced education loans that are paid back by the county or city governments after a loan recipient has paid back a certain number of times might be a better way of handling the problem compared to something more direct, such as increasing the wages of workers in these areas, or reducing their working hours or caseloads.  I imagine the loans off the opportunity for the local government and local lending institutions to earn some profits from the interest payments as loans are repaid.  It also may improve the opportunities for local households, whereas raising salaries or improving working conditions directly may benefit persons who are not local, who take local jobs and move into the area. 

As you write letters for decision-makers, you must try to be very clear about what you are asking them to do, and explain why they should do what you want them to do. You need to be able to clearly tell them why a particular course of action is the best thing to do. Telling them that a situation needs fixing and giving them a general idea about the problem and types of solutions is fine, as that gets them thinking about a problem, but will probably find it more satisfying to push for very specific things when you do advocacy in the public policy sphere. 

This assignment allows students to write about any sort of policy connected in any way with social welfare services or policies. I want people to write about things that matter to them—I want students to care about the topics the address in these papers.  Do you care about the Public Service Loan Forgiveness policy?  Do you think 120 payments should be made before the remainder of the debt is wiped out? You can write about actual policies or made-up policies or policies that are being proposed but haven't been passed or implemented yet.  I think in this case you could be writing about the actual existing PSLF program, in which case it is unnecessary to ask a local politician to make it apply in a specific area, because it already is a federal program.  If you are using the same name, but imagining some other policy, or if you pretending that the PSLF program hasn't been enacted yet, then you would need to explain more about what it is and what it does. A single sentence that explains that some loans (those coming directly from the federal government) are forgiven eventually if someone had made payments on those loans 120 times.