The Department of Education (ED) has just announced that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has, despite the efforts of ED, determined that a limited amount of school-level reporting will be necessary regarding the use of stimulus-based FWS funding. On September 24, ED sent an e-mail to this effect to the presidents and financial aid administrators at approximately 1,800 schools that received $25,000 or more in FWS funding from the stimulus act. ED also posted an electronic announcement (EA) on its IFAP web site with additional information on the reporting requirements. A second e-mail with details of the reporting will be sent in the near future; the reporting by schools is expected to be minimal.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) provided additional funding for the Pell Grant and FWS programs. No reporting will be required of schools (or states) for the Pell Grant funds.
For the FWS Program, ARRA accounts for approximately 16 to 17 percent of total available 2009-10 FWS funds; ED carried that percentage over to individual school allocations for accounting purposes, regardless of whether the institution actually received an increase of funds over last year. An EA posted to IFAP on March 31, 2009, explained that “there will be several transactions on a school's 2009-2010 Statement of Account for FWS, the total of which will be the school's final FWS award. The purpose of these transactions is to identify the portion of the school's 2009-2010 FWS award associated with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.”
All schools participating in FWS have some portion of their allocation attributable to ARRA (unless it would have been less than $1,000), but special reporting is required only if that portion is $25,000 or more. Only schools with that level of ARRA funding—just shy of 1800 institutions—received the e-mail alluding to reporting. The EA posted on September 24, 2009, provides a link to the list of schools that are affected. The list shows the school’s total allocation and the portion of that total that is attributable to ARRA. If your school is on that list, you are subject to ARRA reporting.
Affected schools must register by October 10, 2009, at www.federalreporting.gov to prepare for the quarterly FWS reporting. (The email notes that only one individual at an institution may register in conjunction with the school’s DUNS number, which is used for all Federal funds regardless of which federal department provides the funds. If an individual is already registered, the web site will indicate that; this individual would then be responsible for the FWS ARRA reporting component.)
The initial e-mail states that affected schools will have to report the number of FWS jobs created or maintained by ARRA funding. It is NASFAA’s understanding that this number will most likely be determined by a straightforward formula that ED will provide in the follow-up e-mail. So, don't try to do any counting just yet, and don't panic (just yet)!
Posted 09/25/09 to www.NASFAA.org. Redistribution to non-NASFAA institutions is prohibited. Please submit Web site questions or comments to Web@NASFAA.org.
