Category 2 Budgets Remaining – Amounts Committed as of Oct 16

October 16, 2017

Attached: C2 Budgets Used As of Oct 16

Funding Year 2018 marks the fourth year that schools and libraries can utilize the new E-rate Category 2 funding initiative.  Calculating what has been spent and what remains to be used can be tricky as not all of the data rests in one single place.  However, it is imperative for applicants to know this data so they can determine what Category 2 budgets remain by building.  To help with this effort, I’ve combined data from multiple sources and attached to this message is a spreadsheet that shows, by building, the pre-discount amounts of Category 2 funding that have been committed by USAC since FY 2015.  Please read the following notes carefully so you understand what is and what is not included in this data.

• The data includes APPROVED PRE-DISCOUNT AMOUNTS through October 16, 2017 for Funding Years 2015, 2016 and 2017.
• If your FY 2017 Form 471 for Category 2 funding is still pending, the funding requested on that application is NOT included in this spreadsheet. However, I included a separate tab showing the pending FRNs for FY 2017.   These are not at the building level – just the district level.  If you’re on the “pending” list, you’ll need to factor these buildings’ C2 pending pre-discount requests into your calculations.
• The amounts reflect pre-discount amounts, not committed amounts.  C2 budgets are based on pre-discount amounts, not reflecting your E-rate discount.  This spreadsheet, likewise, does not including any data related to amounts with E-rate discounts applied.
• Remaining C2 budgets are based on commitments, not disbursements.  So if you were committed $10,000, but only used $5,000, file a Form 500 to return the remaining $5,000 commitment to USAC so you can use the C2 funding in future years.  The Form 500 is filed in EPC.
• If you have submitted a Form 500 to return an unused commitment and it has not yet been processed by USAC, it would not be reflected in this spreadsheet.

How to Use This Data to Calculate Your Remaining C2 Budgets
With this data, you can easily calculate the amount of pre-discount Category 2 funding remaining.  I’ve included three extra columns (green) in the spreadsheet to show how to perform the calculations, and included an example (yellow).

1. List the School’s Current Enrollment.  This should be the enrollment provided to PDE with the October 2017 NSLP data (Column J).
2. Multiply the School’s Current Enrollment by $153.47 to obtain Current 5-Year C2 Pre-Discount Budget (Column K).
3. Subtract the subtotal of each school’s Committed, Pre-Discount Amounts from Column I.  This will be the amount of C2 funding remaining to be used.
4. If there are any pending FY 2017 C2 FRNs (shown in the pending tab), subtract those building pre-discount amounts from the C2 available budget.

Libraries will use the same method to calculate remaining C2 budgets, but instead of $153.47 per student, they will use $2.35 per sq. ft. for non-urban libraries, and $5.12 per sq. ft. for large, urban libraries.  See Library Sq. Ft. Tab in spreadsheet for details.

How Many Years Will Category 2 Funding Be Available?

The answer is – we’re unsure.  The rules say that the C2 budgets are 5-year rolling budgets, based on the first year that any school in the district was committed C2 funding.  However, the rules also say that the C2 funding initiative is only available through FY 2019, after which it will sunset unless the FCC takes action.  Therefore, I strongly encourage all schools and libraries to consider their internal connections needs, and utilize their Category E-rate budgets in either Funding Year 2018 or 2019.

If you find that any data for any of your schools or libraries is inaccurate, please let me know.

Where Can You Find Category 2 Data?

• USAC has a C2 budget tracking tool where you can search C2 commitments by building entity number, but it doesn’t include any FY 2017 data.  https://sltools.universalservice.org/portal-external/budgetLookup/
• I obtained the data in the attached spreadsheet from two sources:

– FY 2015:  https://slweb.universalservice.org/form471publicdatatool/app/#/ (“current” view)

– FY 2016 and 2017:  https://data.usac.org/publicreports/Forms/Form471Detail/Index (“current” form version)

Stay tuned for a Category 2-specific webinar in the next few weeks!

– Julie

Julie Tritt Schell
PA E-rate Coordinator
717-730-7133 – o
717-730-9060 – f
jtschell@comcast.net
www.e-ratepa.org

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