Year 12 (FY09), Wave 1 Funding Letters to be Mailed Next Week
Message Posted April 23, 2009
 
This is the time of year in the E-rate cycle where action is happening behind the scenes but not much is being announced (hence the infrequent messages to this listserve!). That's about to change.  The SLD has just announced that the first wave of funding commitment letters are being mailed next week!  This early notification of priority 1 services means that applicants will have the opportunity to receive discounted bills in July if they are diligent about filing their 486s promptly and contacting their vendors to let them know they want their bills to be discounted. I'll post the list of Wave 1 recipients as soon as it becomes available.  A few items:

1)  If you are not funded in Wave 1, don't worry.  There will likely be 40+ funding waves and your commitment will be forthcoming. And compared to other years' first waves, this one will be relatively small. 

2)  If you would like to know the status of your 471, you can find out on the SLD’s website – http://www.sl.universalservice.org/menu – under the 471 column “Application Status.”  The tool gives you the status of all 471s associated with your entity, so be sure to have your entity's entity number handy when you use the tool.  NOTE:  Don't be confused into thinking that the description list of all possible status is actually your status.  Your status will be in the right column of the box at the top of that page and will look something like this:

Form 471 Application Number     Applicant Form Identifier       Application Status     
6594900         Yr 12 P1        Available for Quality Assurance        

3)  And finally, this is a good time to begin your document retention for FY 2009.  If you haven't done so already, gather the following documents and put them in your FY 2009 E-rate file:

• Letter of Agency (LOA) with any E-rate consultants
• Proof that Technology Plan was written before Form 470 was filed
• Form 470 and any Request for Proposals (RFPs)
• Correspondence with vendors during bidding process
• All proposals from vendors (winning and losing)
• Bid evaluation scoring process (or memo to file indicating no bids received)
• Correspondence with vendors during contract negotiation process
• Signed/dated contract, if any
• Minutes of school board meeting where any E-rate contracts were discussed and approved. (if required by school policy)
• Form 471 and Item 21 attachments
• Documentation to support NSLP data submitted to PDE (enrollment proof and NSLP forms returned by students)
• District budget showing ability to pay non-discounted portion of service
• Correspondence during PIA review
  

As always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me.