Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr talks about criminal gangs at the State Capitol on Jan. 27, 2020.
Georgians who racked up large student loan debt while attending the now-closed ITT Technical Institute are set for nearly $10 million in debt relief through a settlement agreement announced Wednesday.
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, who joined 47 other state attorneys general to secure the settlement with the private loan program PEAKS Trust, said the agreement struck this week would compensate former ITT Tech students for “abusive lending practices.”
Nationwide, the settlement is poised to result in debt relief of around $330 million for 35,000 borrowers who took out loans with PEAKS Trust to finance schooling at the for-profit ITT Tech.
In a news release, Carr’s office outlined how temporary student credits offered by PEAKS were the preferred lending instrument promoted by ITT Tech to help students pay for their education.
Many students believed the PEAKS credits were supposed to act like typical student loans that become due six months after graduation. Instead, these credits were due nine months after they were secured, leaving students unable to pay them back so quickly.
These students often came from low-income backgrounds and were “pressured and coerced” by ITT Tech to take out the PEAKS credits, which carried very high interest rates, the news release said. ITT Tech at times threatened to expel students if they did not accept the credit terms.
Ultimately, ITT Tech filed for bankruptcy in 2016 amid a mounting default rate on the PEAKS credits that is expected to exceed 80%. PEAKS Trust has agreed under the settlement to forgo collecting on the outstanding credits and to cease doing business, according to the news release.
This week’s settlement followed an agreement reached last year with a separate loan program, Student CU Connect CUSO, LLC, which resulted in $168 million in debt relief for about 18,600 ITT Tech students. Carr’s office was also part of that prior settlement.
Several groups are pressing Gov. Brian Kemp to start divvying out small federal grant funds aimed at helping families pay for school supplies, child care and other expenses while their children are taking online classes amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a letter sent Tuesday, groups including the American Federation for Children, the Down Syndrome Association of Atlanta and GeorgiaCAN urged Kemp to reserve more than $20 million in federal COVID-19 funds for microgrants, which cover small one-time expenses.
The letter says families could use those grants to purchase technology needed for virtual learning, tutoring services, specialized therapies and for so-called “pod” settings in which students meet in small groups for online classes.
“We believe that offering direct assistance to parents at this time is a necessary lifeline to help prevent those with the greatest need from falling further behind their peers,” the letter says.
The letter also asks Kemp to reserve part of any approved microgrant funding for families whose students have special needs and are currently in virtual-learning environments.
A spokesman for the governor’s office said they are “evaluating a variety of options” for how to spend the state’s remaining allotment of federal COVID-19 aid.
The letter coincided with a poll of Georgians likely to vote in the upcoming Nov. 3 election that found most people in the state would support Kemp tapping into federal emergency funds for COVID-19 microgrants.
Conducted by the Washington, D.C.-based firm Cygnal, the poll also found many parents have spent $500 or more already on costs they would not normally have due to the need for virtual learning, such as computer hardware, child-care services, tutoring, internet access and services for students with disabilities.
“We believe that all children deserve to continue receiving a quality education throughout the pandemic, not just those with the greatest means,” according to the letter.
Along with several educational and disability-advocacy groups, the letter was also signed by a handful of conservative-leaning organizations including the Americans for Prosperity’s Georgia chapter and the Faith and Freedom Coalition of Georgia.
The Georgia Public Policy Foundation and the Georgia Center for Opportunity also signed the letter.
Many of Georgia’s nearly 2 million K-12 students started off this school year with virtual classes as the pandemic has continued to spark concerns from public-health and education officials over the potential for the virus to spread within school communities.
State officials have already made available funding opportunities for schools to receive federal dollars to boost internet access and for low-income families to help pay child-care costs for students learning from home while their parents work.
The state Department of Education has left it to local school districts whether to hold classes in-person or conduct them virtually amid the pandemic.
This story has been updated to include a response from the governor’s office.
ATLANTA – Georgia Tech, already a leader in undergraduate cybersecurity education, is launching a School of Cybersecurity and Privacy.
The new school will be the first of its kind among top research universities. It will weave together Georgia Tech’s three existing cybersecurity degree programs with other interdisciplinary course offerings.
“The new School of Cybersecurity is a reflection of Georgia Tech’s strengths and commitment to serving the needs of our society and our state,” Georgia Tech President Angel Cabrera said Tuesday.
“[It] will focus on applied research collaborations with the fast-growing cybersecurity industry in Georgia and meeting a critical workforce need.”
There is a plentiful supply of cybersecurity jobs in Georgia. Besides the cybersecurity needs of the state’s rapidly growing fintech sector centered around Atlanta, Fort Gordon near Augusta is home to the U.S. Army’s Cyber Command Headquarters.
The Georgia Cyber Center in downtown Augusta opened two years ago and is considering constructing a third building at the complex to keep up with demand for space.
There are more than 500 cybersecurity researchers spread across Georgia Tech’s Midtown Atlanta campus, who bring in more than $180 million in research awards annually.
“Our excellence in the field is well established,” said Rafael L. Bras, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at Georgia Tech. “The school will create the necessary synergy to multiply our impact and make our national security – and the personal security of individuals – safer from the threat of cyberattacks.”
Gov. Brian Kemp is easing restrictions on elderly long-term care facilities imposed at the start of the coronavirus pandemic six months ago. (Photo by Beau Evans)
ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp late Tuesday lifted restrictions on elderly long-term care facilities that have been in effect in Georgia since the coronavirus pandemic hit the state in March.
Effective at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, nursing homes, personal-care homes, assisted-living communities, hospices and other elderly-care facilities were allowed to reopen subject to continuing measures aimed at reducing the spread of COVID-19.
“The state has collaborated with appropriate agencies, long-term care associations and other stakeholders on how to responsibly ease restrictions in long-term care facilities while COVID-19 remains in communities across the state,” Kemp wrote in an executive order.
Under Kemp’s order, elderly-care facilities will be allowed to reopen by progressing through three phases, the third phase being the least restrictive.
Decisions on which phase to implement at any given time must be based on considerations including the number of coronavirus cases in the local community or inside the facility, access to personal protective equipment (PPE), whether a facility’s staffing is adequate and hospital capacity in the local community.
The governor issued a statewide shelter-in-place order in March with the coronavirus pandemic taking hold across Georgia. He has since lifted the order as it applied to most residents and businesses but left it in place for elderly-care facilities, as they were being hit particularly hard by the virus.
The governor emphasized in his order that the number of COVID-19 cases in Georgia continues to grow and that the virus remains “a severe threat to public health.”
Under the Phase I restrictions, visitation to an elderly-care facility will not be allowed in most instances. Non-medically necessary trips should be avoided, while screening of residents and staff will be conducted three times daily under both phases 1 and 2.
Visitation will be allowed under phases 2 and 3, with outside visits preferred. Limited non-medically necessary trips also will be permitted under the second and third phases. Screening of residents and staff will only be required once a day under Phase 3.
The elderly-care facilities order will remain in effect until the conclusion of the public health state of emergency Kemp declared in Georgia back in mid-March.
Georgia food bank workers on Tuesday detailed huge increases in demand for free meals and challenges with delivering food to the state’s out-of-school children since March when the COVID-19 pandemic took hold.
Overall, the Georgia Food Bank Association has seen “an unrelenting increase” in demand for meal services at several food banks in the state of more than 40% compared to last year, said the association’s executive director, Danah Craft.
Many parts of the state are still on track to see high demand for food-bank services even as kids return to in-person schooling where they can receive meals, said several representatives from Georgia food banks during a news conference Tuesday.
“We’ve seen the need for food assistance increase dramatically,” said Kathy McCollum, executive director of the Middle Georgia Community Food Bank, which serves 24 counties around Macon and saw a 50% increase in demand for meal services.
School closures and joblessness prompted by the pandemic have particularly worsened food insecurity for families living in rural parts of the state and minority communities, said several food-bank representatives.
In rural areas outside Augusta, Kellie Cardona of the nonprofit Augusta Dream Center recalled volunteers driving meals out to isolated communities where children would be waiting at the front gates of their houses for meals to arrive.
“That was very eye-opening for all of us [to see] just how serious the need is in child hunger,” Cardona said.
Many workers credited waivers from the federal government that allowed them to deliver higher volumes of food more often than usual as key to meeting the skyrocketing demand. Keeping those waivers in place throughout the pandemic will be important, said several food-bank representatives.
With schools returning for the fall semester, local food banks and their distribution partners have already begun seeing an uptick in demand for free meals.
Cathy Driggers, branch manager of the Rincon Library outside Savannah, said her library had no leftovers Monday on the first day of preparing meals for Effingham County schools children. The library has handed out 10,000 meals since March.
Before COVID-19 hit, Forest Hills United Methodist Church in Macon typically served meals to around 1,900 children each week in 25 schools, said Ann Adkisson, who helps with the church’s meal program. Now, seven schools have already reached out this school year to say they need meals for 1,000 children engaged in online learning, marking a demand Adkisson expects will far outpace a normal year.
“Based on the requests thus far, the number of children identified as food insecure has almost doubled in our community,” Adkisson said.
Federal food stamps have also played a key role in keeping at-risk Georgians fed during the pandemic, said Tom Rawlings, director of the state Division of Family and Children Services.
Food stamp disbursements climbed from around $163 million in February to $300 million in June, Rawlings said. Georgia also allowed families to transfer roughly $194 million in free-meal federal benefits to their food stamp accounts while schools were closed and meals were not served.
Rawlings and others stressed Tuesday many Georgians still face huge financial and food-security challenges even as jobs tick back up and schools return for classes.
“I think we have a long way to go before we get back to a situation where our economy is booming and there are plenty of jobs,” Rawlings said. “I think food insecurity due to the coronavirus pandemic … is going to be with us for some time to come.”
