RI teacher meets Biden — and gets $46,000 in student loans forgiven

The other thing is probably what the president told her: He's forgiving $46,000 of her student loans.

“This doesn’t seem real to me,” Beckford told the Globe. “It still doesn’t.”

The entire interaction was captured on video released online this week by the White House as the Biden administration announced Thursday an additional $4.5 billion in student debt relief from the public Service Loan Forgiveness program serves more than 60,000 borrowers – all of them public employees like Beckford, from nurses and firefighters to teachers and police officers.

In the video, Biden is seen greeting Beckford before telling her, “By the way, you're $46,000 richer.” I just canceled your debt – that's it. Done, done, done. You deserve it.”

According to Beckford, the whole experience began back in June when she filled out a survey for the American Federation of Teachers, asking its members with student loan debt to share their stories to raise awareness.

Eventually, she met with White House staff over a Zoom call, who told her they would help her with her loan forgiveness application, and eventually she was offered a private tour of the famous residence, Beckford said.

Flanked by the Secret Service, Beckford toured the site on Oct. 4 and viewed all the paintings and furniture, she said. And then she sat down in a room right next to the Oval Office, she said.

“I thought, well, here I am. That’s how close I get to (Biden). And then he came into the room,” Beckford remembers. “And it was just – you saw the video, this is 100 percent real, and this is my real reaction. I cried and couldn’t believe I was in the same room as the president.”

“Pretty epic for a little Rhody girl, man,” she added. “It was a crazy experience.”

In the video, Biden walks Beckford around the Oval Office and points out the drawings he receives from children across the country, which he frames and hangs on the wall.

He also calls Beckford's husband Neville to tell him the news, telling Beckford, “Keep it up. Help these kids.”

“He was so sweet. He gave me a little tour of his office, showed me his pictures of his family, showed me where he writes his speeches, joked with me,” Beckford said. “He was so down to earth and relaxed.”

With Thursday's announcement, the Biden administration has so far canceled loans for more than a million public workers under the program, which was first created in 2007 to provide relief to college graduates after 10 years in government or had worked in non-profit professions.

The initiative was updated by Biden after the vast majority of applicants starting in 2017 were rejected due to complicated eligibility requirements.

“The administration has failed to meet its obligations for too long,” Biden said in a statement. “We vowed to fix this, and thanks to our administration’s actions, over one million public workers have now received the relief they are legally entitled to.”

Biden's plans for sweeping student loan cancellation, meanwhile, ran into several legal problems, including a Supreme Court decision last year that thwarted the initiative to cancel up to $20,000 from 40 million borrowers and other challenges in state courts.

Beckford, a mother of two, said she incurred the debt after graduating from Rhode Island College. Even with the forgiveness offered by the government, she still has to pay $12,000, she said.

Still, with less debt, Beckford will have an easier time paying for her daughter's preschool next year and saving money so her two children can go to college if they decide to one day, she said.

All public servants know what debt they would incur if they received a loan, she said. But it's difficult to find well-paying work and they need the support, Beckford said.

“I am a first-generation American citizen and also a first-generation college student. So I’m doing a lot of things that my parents weren’t able to do, and that’s amazing,” Beckford said. “I feel very blessed.”

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.

Christopher Gavin can be reached at [email protected].