New Urban/Rural Look-Up Tool Available
December 23, 2014
Today USAC released their new Urban/Rural Look-Up Tool which is available at: https://sltools.universalservice.org/portal-external/urbanRuralLookup. This tool is designed to help applicants determine the individual and aggregate Urban and Rural status which will be used to calculate the applicant’s overall E-rate discount. Please note that when you submit your FY 2015 Form 471, Block 4, the online system will pre-populate the U/R status for each building. This tool is just designed to give you information in advance of filing the application in order to help determine your discount.
Several notes:
- The first page of the tool asks if you are looking up entities in a School District, Individual School, Individual Library or Library System. If you check School District or Library System, it will allow you to enter a list of entity numbers (which must be separated by commas) and the system will return results showing the U/R status of each entity, and also then calculate whether the District or System as a whole is Urban or Rural. Unfortunately, it does not allow you to simply enter your District’s Billed Entity Number and see a list of all your schools and their U/R status.
- If an entity’s U/R status comes back with a ‘?’, it means the address in the USAC database for that entity is invalid. Applicants seeing this message should call the Client Service Bureau at 888-203-8100 and correct that entity’s physical address in the USAC database.
- Don’t forget, in order to receive the Rural-discount for a School District or Library System, more than half of the schools or libraries (not including non-instructional facilities) must have the Rural status. For example, if you have 5 schools and 3 are considered Urban, the district will be considered Urban.
- If you are unsure of your school or library entity numbers, I’ve also attached a master file containing every entity number with a PA address (sorted by city) which also contains the U/R status for each entity or whether the address is invalid and needs to be corrected in the USAC database.
- If you’re unsure how to use the U/R Look Up Tool, on Tuesday, January 13 at 3:00, USAC will be conducting a webinar on the Urban/Rural Look Up Tool. To attend, register at: https://goto.webcasts.com/starthere.jsp?ei=104995.
– Julie
Julie Tritt Schell
PA E-rate Coordinator
717-730-7133 – o
717-730-9060 – f
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