Study of District and School Uses of Federal Education Funds

May 18, 2020

Study of District and School Uses of Federal Education Funds

Appendix B: Request to States for Documents and Files

Submitted to:

Stephanie Stullich

National Center for Education Evaluation

Institute of Education Sciences

U.S. Department of Education

550 12th Street, SW

Washington, DC 20202

Prepared by:

SRI International

Ashley Campbell

Julie Harris

Deborah Jonas

Jaunelle Pratt-Williams

Augenblick, Palaich & Associates

Bob Palaich

Robert Reichart

Contract GS-10F-0554N/BPA Order ED-PEP-16-A-0005/91990019F0407 (Task 4.2) 

Dear [state coordinator]:

Thank you for participating in the U.S. Department of Education’s Study of District and School Uses of Federal Education Funding. This study is designed to examine the extent to which federal funds add to state and school district programs, where the money goes, what it buys, and how federal programs support or hinder flexibility of spending. The five federal grant programs to be examined in this study are Part A of Titles I, II, III, and IV of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and Title I, Part B of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The study will also collect information on the allocation of funds provided under the Education Stabilization Fund (ESF) authorized under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act).

As part of this study, we are asking states to provide the following data:

1. Your state’s suballocations of FY 2019 and FY 2020 federal education funds (i.e., for the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years) to each school district and other recipient agencies for the following:

1. ESEA Title I, Part A

2. ESEA Title I School Improvement Grants made from funds reserved under Section 1003

3. ESEA Title II, Part A

4. ESEA Title III, Part A

5. ESEA Title III Immigrant Subgrants provided under Section 3114(d)

6. ESEA Title IV, Part A

7. IDEA Title I, Part B

2. Suballocations of the following funds provided under the Education Stabilization Fund (ESF):

   1. Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER)

   2. Governor's Emergency Education Relief Fund (GEER)

3. A listing of LEA program coordinators with contact information for each of the above federal grant programs.

4. The chart of accounts for your state and a crosswalk between your state’s chart of accounts and the NCES School District Finance Survey (F-33).

In order to minimize your burden in providing these data, we have attached detailed information about each part of the request, as well as instructions for submission. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact your study liaison, [insert name, phone, e-mail]. Please submit all data by [insert date].

Thanks again for your cooperation with this important study.

[name]

Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995

According to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, no persons are required to respond to a collection of information unless such collection displays a valid OMB control number. Public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 6 hours per response, including time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. The obligation to respond to this collection is required to obtain or retain benefit (Education Department General Administrative Regulations Section, 34 C.F.R. § 76.591). If you have comments or concerns regarding the status of your individual submission of this survey, please contact the U.S. Department of Education, 400 Maryland Ave., SW, Washington, DC 20202-4537 or email [email protected] directly. [Note: Please do not return the completed survey to this address.]

Data Submission Procedures

Description of Requested Data Files and Documents

1. Suballocations of FY 2019 and FY 2020 federal education funds (i.e., for the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years) to each school district and other recipient agencies for the following federal programs:

   1. ESEA Title I, Part A

   2. ESEA Title I School Improvement Grants made from funds reserved under Section 1003

   3. ESEA Title II, Part A

   4. ESEA Title III, Part A (including Immigrant Subgrants)

   5. ESEA Title IV, Part A

   6. IDEA Title I, Part B

These suballocations should be reported individually for each school district and any other recipient agencies, broken out by program and by year. Each suballocation should be clearly identified by program name. Please also include, for each district or other grant recipient, the district or agency name, NCES ID number, and (if applicable), state ID number.

2. Suballocations of the following funds provided under the Education Stabilization Fund (ESF) authorized under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act):

   1. Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER)

   2. Governor's Emergency Education Relief Fund (GEER)

These suballocations should be reported in the same way as the ESEA and IDEA suballocations reported under #1 above. If your state has not yet completed making its ESSER or GEER suballocations, please complete the other parts of this data submission and let us know when you expect to complete the ESF suballocations.

3. Listing of LEA federal program coordinators. This listing should include name, title (if available), agency name, phone, email address, and mailing address. You may provide this listing in any format that is convenient for you.

4. State chart of accounts for 2019-20 and (if different) 2020-21. We will be collecting detailed revenue and expenditure data from LEAs in your state. To help us interpret and analyze these revenues and expenditures we will also need to understand the account code definitions used in your state. To this end, we request that you provide electronic versions of your state accounting manual and chart of account codes and their descriptions. If they are posted on your agency’s website, you may alternatively provide the URL link to the document.

5. Crosswalk to F-33 Data. We will be incorporating F-33 survey data in our analyses of LEA revenues and expenditures. To facilitate this analysis, we are asking for your crosswalk of the account codes used in your state that match to each object in the Revenues and Expenditures sections of the F-33 survey.

Data Format

We would like to obtain all of the requested data in electronic file(s). Important: Please send us the data in its original structure (i.e., do not burden yourself with combining data into a single dataset if originally held in multiple files or vice versa.).

We would prefer the suballocations data file to be in Excel format. However, if these are not available in Excel, we are happy to accommodate. We can accept files in at least the following formats:

• Dbase (.dbf)

• SAS (.sas)

• Stata (.dta)

• Access (.mdb)

• Tab-Delimited (.tab)

• Comma Separated Values (.csv)

Submission of Files

Once you have gathered the requested information, we ask that you please forward them using one of the following methods:

• Email. Relatively small files may be sent to us as attachments to an e-mail. Note that fiscal files in particular can be too large for many e-mail servers to handle (e.g., attachments that are over 20 MB). Some large files may still be sent via email if they are compressed to a zipped volume(s).

• FTP. Larger files may be sent through a secure File Transfer Protocol (FTP) site. Should you choose this option we will send you login instructions and credentials to access this site, directions on how to upload files, and work with you to ensure smooth transmission of these data.

• Thumbdrive/CD/DVD. Files that are too large for e-mailing can also be burned to CD/DVD or thumbdrive and sent via mail. Please let us know if you prefer to submit the files in this manner, and we will send a pre-paid, pre-addressed FedEx mailer, with instructions, that you may use.

Alternatively, you may send us the information in an electronic form that currently exists and is relatively convenient to share, and work with your study liaison, [insert name], to complete the migration to the requested forms and templates. The study liaison will work with you to clarify any outstanding questions or ambiguities that arise in completing the migration of the data to the requested forms. 

Questions

To assist you in complying with this request, we have prepared the following resources: 

• You may call or e-mail your study liaison, [insert liaison name] at [phone number] or [email]. You will receive a response within one business day. 

In all cases, we believe that establishing a close working relationship with your study liaison is the best way to make the data collection process as effective and efficient as possible.

You may also contact us if you would like any additional information about our plans, please contact Ashley Campbell, Project Director from SRI, at (720) 389-5906 or [email protected]. You may also contact Mark Fermanich, Education Researcher from APA, at (720) 227-0101 or [email protected].

Thank you in advance for your time and cooperation.