On June 15, my Funds For Learning colleague, Nick Shipley, wrote an analysis article on tips and reminders for districts to think about during the summer months. One of the important guidance provided was that depending on summer vacation and work hours, the E-rate coordinator should think about alerting the SLD about a Summer deferral for answering application review questions. To quote directly from Nick, “…. If you do not have a Summer contact listed on the Form 471, and the PIA reviewer is unable to contact you, your application should be put on Summer deferral. The SLD recognizes that you might be unavailable to answer questions during the summer and should not penalize you for not being available to answer questions during the Summer months. Applicants can call the SLD’s Client Services Bureau at 888-203-8100 to expedite informing the SLD of their desire to set up the summer deferral for your district..”
Many schools and school districts have already begun to take advantage of this guidance. Over $117 million worth of FY2018 applications are now listed as being in the “Summer Deferral” time period. Any applicant can confirm if their current funding request(s) falls under the Summer deferral status or service providers can check to see if a customer has identified themselves in this manner here. The Summer deferral time period ends the Friday after Labor Day.
