To: Liberal Studies Students

Subject: APLE Awards Available To Pay Back Educational Loans for Future Teachers

The Assumption Program of Loans for Education (APLE), a State program designed for students who are entering the teaching profession, enables students who are enrolled in a program leading to an initial teaching credential to have educational loans assumed by the California Student Aid Commission.

The basic APLE program assumes up to $11,000 in educational loans in association with four consecutive years of full-time teaching in a designated teacher shortage field or eligible California K-12 public school. To be eligible to participate in APLE, an individual is required to teach in any one of the following:

• A designated teacher shortage field, which includes mathematics, science, reading and language arts specialists, foreign language, music and special education,
• Schools serving a large population of students from low-income families,
• Low-performing schools, defined as those in the bottom 50 percentile of the Academic Performance Index (API),
• Schools having a high percentage of teachers holding emergency permits,
• Schools serving rural areas,
• State Special Schools.

Liberal Studies students who teach in a low-performing or low-income school for four years receive $11,000 in benefits. New teachers in special education may receive both the basic $11,000 and up to $1,000 of additional loan assumption during each of four years. Another $1,000 of benefits may be received annually for the four years by individuals teaching special education in a school ranked in the lowest 20 percentile of the State’s API, resulting in a maximum of $19,000 in loan assumption benefits.

The APLE program assume educational loans that were incurred either to meet the costs of obtaining a baccalaureate degree or an initial teaching credential.

If you have taken an educational loan and plan to teach in a school that qualifies as a result of serving high need populations, we encourage you to apply. There are a substantial number of APLE allocations still available for 2005-06, and if you are eligible you will have an excellent chance of obtaining one. The application and instructions are on the CSU APLE Web site at:

http://www.csusuccess.org/scholarship

If you think you are eligible for this excellent program that will assume payment for your educational loans, you are urged to visit the CSU APLE Web site, print the application, and submit it to your campus APLE Coordinator immediately. Campus coordinators are listed on the Web site (see Step 4).

Thank you for giving this immediate attention. We want as many Liberal Studies students as possible to participate in APLE and thereby reduce significantly the costs of paying back their educational loans.