News of the Week

Wave 22 for FY 2015 will be released on Thursday, October 22nd. Funding for FY 2015 is available for both Category 1 and Category 2 services at all discount levels. As of Wave 21, cumulative funding for FY 2015 was over $2.32 billion.

Wave 68 for FY 2014 will be released on Monday, October 19th. Funding for FY 2014 is available for Priority 1 services only. Priority 2 funding has been denied at all discount levels. Cumulative funding for FY 2014 is over $2.27 billion.

New Entity Number Requirements:

USAC’s latest News Brief, discussed in more detail below, explains the necessity of having separate entity numbers for “parent” and “child” entities within the EPC portal. For certain types of applicants — most commonly school districts, library systems, and consortia — this will require having Billed Entity Numbers for the “parents,” and other Entity Numbers for the “children.”  In EPC, program forms can be filed only under the BENs of the “parent” entities.

Form 470 Allowable Contract Dates:

Displays of posted Form 470s in the EPC portal have been updated to show their Allowable Contract Dates (“ACDs”). Previously, EPC showed only the submission date of the Form 470s, requiring applicants and service providers to calculate the minimum 28-day posting dates.

Form 470 data for FY 2016, which is available outside of EPC (either as a specific Form 470 display or as a set of difficult-to-use data files), is completely unusable in this regard. Neither Form 470 search tool shows either the Form 470 submission dates or the ACDs.

Contract Upload Feature:

EPC will give applicants the ability to upload existing contracts into their own portal accounts. At present, this will be an option, not a requirement. The contract upload capability could be advantageous for applicants because:

1. Having the contracts available to PIA as needed may be a time-saver during application review.
2. Ready access to existing contracts in portal accounts may provide useful recordkeeping benefits for the applicants themselves.

Note: More generally, the new EPC system is designed to provide centralized storage of, and access to, a growing base of applicant E-rate documents. Applicants should recognize, however, that EPC storage of these documents does not relieve the applicants of their own record retention requirements.

Limitation on View-Only Rights:

Users added to EPC accounts may be given or assigned the following three levels of permission:  full, partial, and view-only. However, Account Administrators should note that view-only designations do not convey full access to view all portal data. Most specifically — at least as EPC is presently configured —  view-only users do not have access to draft forms, such as Form 470s, as they are being prepared. View-only users can see these forms only after they have been submitted. 

Upcoming E-Rate Training and Deadlines:

FCC Appointments to the USAC Board:

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler appointed (or reappointed) twelve members to USAC’s Board of Directors to fill expired or vacant positions (see DA 15-1187). The appointments become effective November 1, 2015. From an E-rate perspective, the three most important actions are:

• The reappointment of Brian Talbott, Ph.D., Executive Director Emeritus, Association of Educational Service Agencies (“AESA”) — currently the Chair of the USAC Board.
• The reappointment of Daniel A. Domenech, Executive Director, American Association of School Administrators (“AASA”).
• The appointment, as a representative of the libraries, of Robert Bocher, Consultant for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction and a member of both the American Library Association (“ALA”) and the State E-Rate Coordinators’ Alliance (“SECA”).

The term of another six Board members will expire December 31, 2015, and will be addressed by the FCC at a later date. This group includes a third school representative, Julie Tritt Schell, E-Rate Coordinator for the Pennsylvania Department of Education (and SECA member) — currently the Chair of USAC’s Schools & Libraries Committee.

Additional USAC Data Quality Assurance:

In its Special Edition News Brief of July 21, 2015, USAC announced an effort to “clean up”  Category 1 data on FY 2015 Form 471s. The process was aimed at resolving apparent discrepancies between the services as described and the actual bandwidth and/or prices of those services. As a second step in this process, delving deeper into the integrity of the broadband data being compiled, USAC began sending notices to applicants last week seeking to schedule more detailed telephone conversations. These email notices are identified by the subject line “Data Quality Assurance.”

USAC is careful to note that these inquiries are not part of the FY 2015 funding review process — indeed, many of the applications have already been funded — but are designed to “fully understand the broadband services requested” by the applicants.

The S&L News Brief of October 16, 2015, discusses a new aspect of EPC that may require certain applicants to obtain additional Entity Numbers or Billed Entity Numbers. The requirement stems from the relationship described by USAC as “parents” (which are the applicants for E-rate) and “children” (which are the individual entities or sites associated with those applicants).

For many simple applicants, such as independent schools or libraries, there may be no E-rate difference between “parent” and “child.” A single Billed Entity Number (“BEN”) can be used to identify both the applicant and the school or library site.

Applicants with additional schools, libraries, and/or administrative centers (i.e., Non-Instructional Facilities or “NIFs”), however, should read this News Brief carefully. Where, in the past, such an applicant may have used a single number to identify itself as the billed applicant entity and as a physical location, the applicant will now require separate numbers, one to identify the BEN of the “parent” filing E-rate applications, and as many as necessary to identify the individual entity sites.

Applicants with multi-location schools (i.e., with multiple sites considered as single schools by their states) should reread the previous S&L News Brief of October 9, 2015, describing the new EPC treatment of “annexes” that can now be identified and listed without separate entity numbers.

One important and more complex issue not discussed in recent News Briefs on the use of entity numbers within EPC — an issue still under discussion within USAC — is the treatment of parent-child relationships in “district” or consortium applications of an Educational Service Agency (“ESA”). In an April 3rd News Brief released prior to the close of the FY 2015 application window, USAC provided Block 4 discount rate guidance for four types of ESAs. The guidance depended upon whether the ESAs had or did not have their own schools, and whether applications were solely for ESAs’ own services (in a “district” type application) or for their regional districts’ service (in a consortium application).

Attempting to apply the same guidance to FY 2016 applications may prove difficult within EPC. In one case, it would involve assigning ESA “children” to a member district “parent” — an adoptive child approach. In another case, it would involve assigning district “children” to both a district “parent” and an ESA “parent” — a two-parent approach that might have societal benefits (in a broader sense), but that might create conflicts within EPC.