Begin Filing Year 5 Form 470s Now
Message Posted July 17, 2001
Although no one has yet received their Year 4 funding commitment letters yet, I am sending out my first e-mail on Year 5!
As you know, the SLD allows you to post your Form 470 at any time in order to coincide with your normal procurement procedures. The only exception to this rule is for tariffed and month-to-month services, for which you have to wait until July 1 to post for these services. And since we are past July 1, you may not post a Form 470 for any service. The 470, as you know, is the form you use to electronically post the services you seek on the SLD website. The posting must remain for 28 calendar days during which you may collect responses (bids) from prospective vendors. On the 29th day or after, you then sign your contract.
The next step is then to wait for the Form 471 filing window to open -- which normally occurs in mid-November and closes in mid-January. The 471 is the mechanism to tell the SLD who the vendor is that you selected, the price, the contract dates, your discount (and how you calculated that discount), and a detailed description of the service or component that you are requesting.
So for everyone in a school or library that is trying to fill their days this summer, you may want to go to the SLD website and get an early start on Year 5 by posting your Form 470's now.
Don't forget:
* If you filed a 470 in a previous year and then signed a multi-year contract, you do not need to repost your Form 470. Simply file the 471 when the window opens, using the original 470 number. But....
* Tariff and month-to-month services are considered yearly agreements and thus you must repost for them every year. To the SLD, there is no such thing as a multi-year tariff.
If all of this sounds Greek, never fear. We will be scheduling E-rate Workshops for Beginners around October to explain the whole beautiful, simple program. Allot 6 hours.
-- Julie
Julie Tritt Schell
Director, Office of Educational Technology
Pennsylvania Department of Education
(717) 705-4486
(717) 787-7222 - fax
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