Year 2 E-rate Update: Appeals, BEARS, Out of Window Applications, and Form 500s
Message Posted August 15, 2000
(2nd of 3 E-rate updates)
File BEARs Now
If you were funded for E-rate discounts in Year 2, now is a good time to submit a BEAR form to the SLD to get reimbursed for discounts to which you are entitled. Except in cases where applicants are utilizing the 3-month extension for nonrecurring service installation, most applicants should have received all Year 2 bills and invoices and be at a point where they can begin the reimbursement process.
If Year 1 is any example, most Pennsylvania applicants chose not to exercise the quarterly or semi-annually BEAR option and instead waited until after the funding year had ended (June 30) to submit one large BEAR form. This approach is perfectly fine except that hundreds of entities forgot to submit the BEAR form and were left with funds remaining unknowingly until we posted their names in an e-mail. We are in the process of trying to obtain this same list of applicants with funds remaining in their FRNs and I will post it as soon as it is received. In order to not be on this list, I encourage you to submit your BEAR forms as soon as possible.
If your bills or invoices were already credited with a discount, please be sure to remind your service providers that now also is the time for them to invoice the SLD. The final date for submitting BEARS and service provider invoices -- for all applicants, including the 3-month extension grantees -- is Nov. 20, 2000.
Please also remember that, in order to process a BEAR form or service provider invoice form, the SLD must have received and accepted your Form 486 for the relevant services (or receive it at the same time).
Appeals
Virtually all Year 2 appeals have been considered and applicants should have received a letter detailing whether their appeal had merit or did not. If the SLD deemed that the appeal did have merit, a Funding Commitment Letter then was sent to the applicant listing what funds had been approved. According to the SLD, all letters, including all funding commitment letters, have been mailed, except for a minor few that are still pending.
If you submitted a Year 2 appeal and have not received the initial letter indicating whether your appeal was meritorious or not, please let me know via e-mail. As soon as I have a complete list of all Year 2 appeal funding commitments, I send it to the listserve.
Year 2 Out of Window Applications
If you filed a Year 2 Form 471 after April 6, 1999, including any application received during the special March 2000 application window, that application is known as an "out of the window application." Although no funds were available in Years 1 and 3 to fund out of the window applications, there are funds available to fund a majority of those applications in Year 2. The exact amount requested is not yet known because the SLD has not data entered all out of the window requests. The exact amount available also is not known because not everyone has submitted BEARs or Invoices for Year 2 WITHIN the window commitments.
Although the SLD is working to process Year 3 requests, they have begun data-entering Year 2 out of the window requests, and some applicants already have begun to receive calls from PIA. In general, Year 2 out of the window requests will be considered after all Year 3 commitments have been made -- likely in October. The next logical question is how Year 2 out of the window commitments will be able to be spend since June 30 has passed. To deal with this issue, the FCC will have to issue an Order granting these particular applicants time to spend these funds.
Return Unspent Commitments!
Were you committed more funds than you actually spent in Year 2? Did you project come in under budget? Did you decide not to proceed with a funded project? If any of these situations pertain to you, I encourage you to use the new Form 500 to release (or turn back) the unusable funds. You may wonder why you'd bother, but we estimate that the summary of such actions will release millions of Year 2 dollars -- funds that can then be committed to out of the window applications. The form is available at: http://www.sl.universalservice.org/data/500.pdf.
Next message to come: Year 4 has already begun!
-- Julie
Julie Tritt Schell
Executive Policy Specialist
Pennsylvania Department of Education
333 Market Street, 10th Floor
Harrisburg, PA 17126
(717) 705-4486
(717) 787-7222 - fax
jtritt@state.pa.us
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