The USAC Schools and Libraries Committee held their Quarterly Board Meeting on January 30, 2012. During the meeting, the Committee stated that the Form 471 window opened as scheduled on January 9, and will close at 11:59 ET on March 20. As of today’s date, 2,261 applicants have filed their FY2012 Form 471 applications and 25,769 FY2012 Form 470s have been posted. By contrast, for Funding Year 2011, 25,402 Form 470s had been filed by the end of January.
The Committee debated the “disbursement lag,” which is the time between when an applicant receives a commitment and when they actually receive disbursements on those commitments. Nationwide, approximately 25% of committed funds go unutilized in each funding year.
Other items of note:
USAC will release their Quarterly Report this week, and it is expected that the Report will identify approximately $250 million available for possible rollover for FY2012.
- The Committee approved the SLD’s recommendation to deny FY2011 Priority Two requests at 79% and below. It will likely take a few weeks for the FCC to approve the recommendation. The SLD reported to the Board that they anticipate the final FY2011 P2 threshold to be 87%, although they did not make an official recommendation to drop the threshold below its current 90% level. It was reported that the SLD has released 449 appeal decisions since October 2011, and most SLD appeal decisions are released within 90 days of receipt of appeal. It was also noted that the SLD is processing invoices 98% of invoices within 30 days.
Note: This information is not the official minutes from the meeting, but simply notes from a Funds For Learning representative who was in attendance. The official minutes for this meeting, as well as minutes from previous meetings, can be found here.
