Within the next two days, the Schools and Libraries Division will be releasing a wave
Within the next two days, the Schools and Libraries Division will be releasing a wave of 1,500 funding commitment decisions letters totaling $140 million in E-rate funds. The average commitment in this wave is over $93,300 per applicant. Wave Seven brings to almost 18,500 the number of funded applications to date. With these commitments plus the number of applicants notified that their requests could not be funded (due to ineligible services or internal connections below the discount threshold), SLD has responded to more than two-thirds of its 1998 in-the-window applicants. Approximately $760 million has been committed through Wave Seven, or about 40% of the available funding.
Wave Seven is NOT the last wave of E-rate funding commitments for the year. It will be followed by two to four additional waves before the process is concluded. While we had hoped to make the vast majority of commitments by the end of January, and worked diligently to do so, we are also committed to providing detailed review of each application for compliance with program rules, as we agreed to do in the course of our audits by both the General Accounting Office and PricewaterhouseCoopers. We are completing our final review of each application as quickly as we can without sacrificing assurance of program integrity, and have continued to add staff resources to expedite the overall review process.
Please watch the SLD Web Site and our Newsflash distribution for more information about the schedule of upcoming funding commitments. We are also encouraging all current and potential E-rate applicants to get their 1999-2000 Form 470 in as soon as possible to begin the E-rate process for Year
