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Government shutdown hampers college aid application process

By Elsa Gillis
By Elsa Gillis

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Channel 9 learned the government shutdown is making it difficult for at least one local student to go to college this semester.

Sean Kaufman’s family said they couldn’t get the information they needed from the IRS to start the new semester at Central Piedmont Community College.

"I think I want to go to school for game simulation development," Kaufman said.

[Federal employees feeling impact of government shutdown]

He's been working and saving money for a car since graduating high school in June so that he could drive to CPCC to attend class.

"It's very important to me because, it's like, my future," Kaufman said.

That goal hit a roadblock this week when he and his mom were trying to get a tax transcript from the IRS to give to CPCC for his financial aid form.

"When we went to the website, it’s down, and I called the IRS all the numbers and it just says it’s closed," his mother, Jessica Harris, said.

An error message shows when you try to get the from the IRS’s website.

Another page said that most IRS operations are closed due to the lapse in appropriations.

"Every which way we turned, there was nothing we could do,” Harris said. “The IRS was shut down, the website, and CPCC needed the document."

They started to panic.

"To turn around yesterday and tell my son after he's worked so hard that he couldn’t go to school because the government shutdown, and he didn’t have some form,” Harris said. “It broke my heart."

She said CPCC told her they would look into it and on Thursday, they sent a message out to students confirming the partial shutdown is impacting the financial aid application process. CPCC said it would extend the time given to submit required documents.

The mother and son are grateful the college came up with a quick solution, but they are worried about other students as the shutdown lingers.

"I'm sure there’s a lot of kids and students, etc., that want to go back to school," Kaufman said.

The media contact for the IRS said that part of the website may have been down before the shutdown and they were looking into why it's still down.

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