The Schools and Libraries Division announced that on June 1 it will release the last formal wave for the 2003 funding year, approving more than $59 million worth of funding commitments in 185 letters.
With the latest wave, number 40, the SLD will have committed more than $2.6 billion for the 2003 funding year, more than $400 million more than it has approved for any other funding year. The SLD is expected to communicate soon to any remaining applicants about the status of their applications.
For the 2003 funding year, the SLD was able to approve internal connections requests for applicants with discount rates of as low as 70 percent. Applicants who are just now being approved for requests “non-recurring” expenses will have until September 30, 2006 to make use of that funding. The SLD will make details of the latest wave publicly available over the next few days.
The latest wave will mark the longest amount of time it took for the SLD to complete the bulk of its review of applications for a particular funding year since the program began—23 months after the start of the funding year. By comparison, the SLD completed the bulk of its work on applications for the 2002 funding year by the end of June 2003, 12 months after the start of the funding year.
