AN ACT TO AMEND TITLE 14 OF THE DELAWARE CODE RELATING TO EDUCATOR AND SCHOOL-BASED MENTAL HEALTH PRACTITIONERS SUPPORT PROGRAMS.

The Department of Education (“Department”) currently administers the High Needs Educator Student Loan Repayment Program, the Speech-Language Pathologist Student Loan Repayment Program, and the Mental Health Services Student Loan Repayment Program. Annually, these programs help roughly 600 public school employees, including educators, speech-language pathologists, school counselors, school psychologists, and school social workers, through a single application process, by making loan payments directly to student loan lenders. But paying the lenders directly has caused 2 persistent issues: 1. Because the payments are considered taxable income, award recipients have the tax withheld from their paychecks, even though the payments go directly to the lenders. This lowers the award recipients’ take-home pay and can create confusion and hardship. 2. The process involves sending out 600 or more individual checks each year. And many checks are returned or delayed due to changes in lender information or system mismatches. To avoid these issues, the Department recommends combining the 3 different student loan repayment programs into a single program and changing the award process from a system that repays lenders directly to a system that pays stipends to public school employees through the State central payroll operation. These changes would streamline a system that already uses a single application and would do all of the following: 1. Avoid surprise tax impacts and imputed income issues. 2. Reduce administrative burden and failed payments. 3. Provide more timely and transparent support to award recipients. The suggested changes are easy to implement, budget-neutral, and could allow public school employees who previously declined awards due to the tax consequences to benefit from the financial support. This Act makes the changes recommended by the Department by doing all of the following: 1. Eliminates the separate Speech-Language Pathologist Student Loan Repayment Program, Mental Health Services Student Loan Repayment Program, and High Needs Educator Student Loan Repayment Program, and combines them into a single program under § 4163 of Title 14. 2. Shifts payment of awards from paying the lenders directly to paying the award recipients a stipend through the State central payroll operation. 3. Streamlines the process for determining financial need by allowing the Department to focus on collecting the income and loan information that is necessary to fairly allocate program funds. 4. Changes the title of § 4163 of Title 14 from the High Needs Educator Student Loan Repayment Program to the “Public School Employee Support Program for High Need Areas” because the 3 programs are now combined into a single program and the program is no longer a direct student loan repayment program. This Act also makes technical corrections to conform existing law to the standards of the Delaware Legislative Drafting Manual.