The USAC Schools and Libraries Committee held their quarterly meeting on January 24, 2011. The Committee approved their operating budget and discussed how to continue to make the E-rate program run more efficiently.
Here are some highlights from the meeting:
- The Committee is concerned that there continues to be confusion among stakeholders about the new gift ban rules, what marketing activities are appropriate from service providers at K-12 technology conferences and how the SLD will interpret and enforce the regulations. The SLD recommends that school districts and service providers who have questions about their activities around this issue should reach out to the SLD in order to address their questions.
- The Committee approved their operating budget which includes an additional $6 million for the Beneficiary and Contributor Compliance Program (BCAP). This brings a total of $10 million in dedicated funds for this program over the last year which included 100 audits.
- The SLD will be working toward launching an initiative in the next several months to release more electronic notifications to stakeholders such as e-Receipt Notification Letters (e-RNL) and e-Receipt Acknowledgement Letters (e-RAL).
- The Committee recommended to the FCC that the final FY 2010 Priority Two Discount Level be 81%.
The Committee will release their Quarterly Report next week and Funds For Learning will be able to determine how much money USAC has available for possible rollover for FY 2011. Based upon the Quarterly Report, the FCC will ultimately make the decision later this year how much money to rollover into FY2011. In prior funding years, the amount of money rolled over has directly impacted the number of priority two projects that receive E-rate support.
