The Schools and Libraries Division announced April 16 that during the last week of this month it will begin issuing funding commitments for Priority One services for the 2003 funding year, which starts July 1.
Because the SLD has projected that requests for telecommunications services and Internet access totaled $1.745 billion of the $2.25 billion it is authorized to disburse, it knows that it will have enough money to cover those requests. It said it did not know when it would be able to provide any guidance on the status of requests for internal connections services, or when it might start to make those commitments.
This year, the SLD asked applicants to file for Priority One and Priority Two services on separate Form 471 applications, so that it could move forward with the Priority One applications. Last year, it said, 5,524 applications combined the two, but this year it received only 2,196 applications that sought both levels of services.
Last year, the SLD began issuing funding commitments for the 2002 funding year on April 19. It is still working to complete its review of those applications.
