The Schools and Libraries Division announced Jan. 11 that it has released another wave of Year 4 funding commitments, this time totaling $26.5 million.
The wave comes one week before the filing window deadline for Year 5 and means that for the first time since Year 2, the SLD was unable to issue all of its funding commitments before the deadline for the next application cycle. With the latest wave, number 12, the SLD will have committed about $1.85 billion, or about 82 percent of the $2.25 billion it is permitted to disburse for funding Year 4.
The SLD's ability to issue funding commitments on a timely basis was hampered this past year by a turnover of Federal Communications Commission members and new procedures that had to be put in place to administer the Children's Internet Protection Act. The fastest that the SLD has been able to process a year's worth of funding commitments was in Year 2, when the process took about four and a half months. The SLD has already started reviewing the Year 5 applications that it has already received.
In the latest wave of Year 4 commitments issued, there was no change in the approved discount rate for internal connections requests, which remained at 88 percent.
