With the SAVE repayment plan still locked in federal litigation as of early 2026 — leaving millions of borrowers in a holding pattern that accumulates no credit toward loan forgiveness — public school teachers with federal student debt are facing a narrowing set of options. Some have been waiting more than 18 months for clarity that has not arrived. Others, like Marcus Dillard, did not even know there was a clock running.
When I sat down with Marcus Dillard at a coffee shop in East Atlanta in early March 2026, he had just opened his loan servicer’s account portal for the first time in six months. He laughed when he said it. It was not a comfortable laugh.
‘I’m a math teacher,’ he told me. ‘I teach kids how numbers work every single day. But when it comes to my own finances, I just go blank.’
The Bills Marcus Stopped Opening
Marcus, 34, graduated with a master’s in education from Georgia State University in 2016, borrowing approximately $62,000 in federal Direct Loans to cover tuition and living costs. At the time, he expected the graduate degree to translate into a meaningful salary increase. It did — just not by enough to absorb what came next.
He earns roughly $58,000 a year teaching math at a Title I public high school in DeKalb County. His wife, Renée, worked as a dental hygienist earning close to $34,000 annually until their second child arrived in 2023. After that, she cut her hours substantially, pulling their combined household income down to approximately $67,000 in 2025.
Childcare consumed more than a third of their take-home pay. Marcus had been making minimum payments on $8,400 in credit card debt while his student loans sat on a standard 10-year repayment plan, charging him $680 per month. The math was not working.
‘We were fine, then we weren’t, and I don’t even know when it changed,’ Marcus told me. ‘I stopped looking at the bank app because I didn’t want to feel that thing in my chest when the numbers came up.’
That avoidance — checking out emotionally from a financial picture that feels out of control — is something I encounter repeatedly while reporting on families navigating federal student aid programs. Marcus knew it was happening. He just did not know how to stop it.
What Income-Driven Repayment Actually Means for a Teacher’s Budget
Under an income-driven repayment plan, Marcus’s monthly loan obligation could drop to a fraction of what he had been paying — a change that hinges not on forgiveness, but on recalibrating his payment to reflect his actual household income and family size.
Marcus had been enrolled in the standard 10-year repayment plan since 2017. According to Federal Student Aid, borrowers with federal Direct Loans can switch to income-driven repayment (IDR) plans that cap monthly payments as a percentage of discretionary income — the portion of earnings remaining after a protected amount is subtracted, based on the federal poverty guideline for your household size.
The original Income-Based Repayment (IBR) plan remains fully available regardless of the ongoing SAVE plan litigation. For borrowers who first took out loans after July 1, 2014, IBR caps payments at 10% of discretionary income. For a family of four with Marcus’s approximate income, the calculation reduces his effective monthly payment dramatically.
On IBR, based on his family size and income, Marcus’s estimated monthly payment comes to approximately $127 — a reduction of more than $550 per month compared to the standard plan he had been on for nearly nine years. That difference, compounded over months, is what shifted his entire financial posture.
The Program He Had Never Heard Of
The turning point in Marcus’s story was not a policy announcement or a government mailing. It was a conversation in the teachers’ break room between second and third period.
A colleague — a 41-year-old social studies teacher who had been at the school for eleven years — mentioned offhandedly that he had just received approval through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. His remaining balance, roughly $38,000, had been wiped out after 120 qualifying monthly payments. Marcus had heard of PSLF vaguely. He had assumed it applied to federal government lawyers or public defenders. Not classroom teachers.
According to Federal Student Aid’s PSLF program page, borrowers who work full-time for a qualifying public service employer — which includes public schools at every level — and make 120 qualifying monthly payments on an eligible repayment plan can have their remaining Direct Loan balance forgiven. That forgiveness is currently tax-free at the federal level.
Marcus’s Title I school in DeKalb County qualifies as a public service employer. He had been employed there for eight years. Had he enrolled in an IDR plan and submitted the required Employment Certification Form when he started, he might have been less than two years from forgiveness.
Where Marcus Stands Today — And What He Wishes He Had Known Sooner
The outcome, when Marcus walked me through it, was genuinely mixed. He submitted an Employment Certification Form in February 2026 and simultaneously enrolled in IBR. His servicer confirmed receipt and opened a review of his full payment history going back to 2017.
The central question is how many of his previous standard-plan payments qualify retroactively. Standard 10-year repayment payments technically do qualify for PSLF, but only if the borrower was certified as a public service employee during those payment periods — a step Marcus never completed. His servicer is currently reviewing whether any of his approximately 47 pre-2026 payments can be counted.
If those prior payments are certified, Marcus could reach the 120-payment threshold in approximately six years. If none of them qualify, his PSLF clock restarted in February 2026 — meaning forgiveness would arrive in early 2036, when he is 44 years old.
‘That’s the part that keeps me up a little,’ Marcus told me. ‘Not knowing how many of those old payments count. Because if they don’t count, I’m basically starting over.’
His IBR payment of $127 per month has already produced a visible difference in the household budget. The $553 monthly gap between his former standard-plan payment and his current IBR payment has gone toward paying down the credit card balance. In six weeks, that balance dropped from $8,400 to approximately $7,100.
Walking out of the coffee shop, Marcus checked his phone — something I noticed he had been avoiding for most of our two-hour conversation. He pulled up the loan servicer app and held it so I could see the balance on the screen: $59,814. Still there. Still large. But this time, he was looking at it.
He has spent eight years teaching other people’s children how to work through equations that initially seem impossible. The one that matters most to his own household — how many months until this debt disappears — finally has a formula, even if the answer is not as clean as he had hoped.
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