[Busmgrs] A message from Michael Wiltfong and Barb Cruickshank: State Fiscal Stabilization Fund 2008-09 Actuals Expenditure Data Collection

[WILTFONG Michael]

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act State Fiscal Stabilization Fund 2008-09 Actuals Expenditure Data Collection


Recent guidance given by the U.S. Department of Education in their February 2010 monitoring instructions:

All funds appropriated under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), including funds appropriated under the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (SFSF) program, must be spent with an unprecedented level of transparency and accountability.

The Department is committed to ensuring maximum transparency and accountability in the use of ARRA funds. As such, the Department will thoroughly and systematically monitor each State's and subgrantee's implementation of the SFSF program.

The Oregon Office of School Finance is requesting your cooperation in collecting the ARRA SFSF fiscal year 2008-09 expenditure data.

This data collection will help satisfy several reporting requirements mandated by the federal government for the Oregon Department of Education (ODE); most notable will be the during-the-award monitoring. As well, we just recently received notice the National Public Education Financial Survey (NPEFS) and the School District Finance Survey (F33) representatives received approval from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to collect this financial information. The NPEFS and F-33 reporting deadline is March 15, 2010.

The ODE has also been asked to determine the 2008-09 baseline for General Fund expenditures by school for the Title I office, and we're to exclude the 2008-09 SFSF expenditures for this analysis. This project has a reporting deadline of March 31, 2010. As you can see we have a short timeline to compile the data and have it ready to submit to the federal government and meet our reporting deadlines.

Due to this short timeline and in an attempt to minimize the impact of adding a new collection to the schedule, a decision was made to use an existing collection that could fulfill our data needs. The Good news: The ARRA SFSF collection will be exactly like Actuals - a collection many of you are very familiar with - and will ask for the same detail:  Fund, Function, Object, OpUnit, AofR and expenditure amount detail.

Please note: The district data must include all charter school SFSF expenditure data.  This would be for SFSF monies that the district forwarded to a charter school.  School districts should also include any SFSF expenditures incurred as a result of SFSF monies received from ESDs. Be sure to use the appropriate school OpUnit for your regular schools and any charter schools.  ODE will crosswalk the school OpUnit on the Operational Unit collection for all schools' SchoolID and then crosswalk it to the federal SchoolID.


What if I used a supplemental spreadsheet to track SFSF expenditures?

If a district used an Excel spreadsheet to keep expenditure detail, or if a district can download the ARRA SFSF data to an Excel spreadsheet, it can be copied into the 2008-09 Actuals SMF Creator to create the file format and upload to the data collection. Please see attached SMF Creator. The SMF Creator will check for coding errors and will add together any duplicate records.  It will not check for codes that would not be appropriate specifically for the ARRA SFSF, such as 5200-710 Transfer Outs or Function 2540 - Operation and Maintenance of Plant Services.

There are a few tips to consider when using the SMF Creator:
1.      Save the SMF Creator to your hard drive.  If you cannot open the file, you need to change your Excel macro security to a lower level.
2.      Use 'full screen' so you can see the tabs at the bottom. Districts will only use the Expenditure tab for this collection.
3.      In the header, for all district information, fill-in only the yellow area (not gray).  The district InstID number is both the InstID and the SenderID.  Click on [Add 1 or More Rows], then add enough rows so that the data copied into the SMF Creator does not cover the Total row.
4.       After data is copied, click on Make Expenditure SMF.  If you have fatal errors, it will not allow you to go any further until the errors have been corrected.  Fatal errors are generally highlighted in red or blue, but it will be very specific.  If you have warnings, you may have Functions that you may or may not want to add to an Area (highlighted in yellow). You can just click okay and it will continue to create the file.  Jot down the exact location and file name of the file it created.

Please note: There is concern about the timing of this data collection and possible confusion in the field due to the 2008-09 Actuals Expenditure report and the 2008-09 SFSF Actual Expenditures collections potentially being open at the same time, so please be careful when submitting your data if you currently meet this criteria.

I apologize for the late release of this data collection.  However, I would like to remind everyone the ARRA SFSF grant represents more than $341 million in available K-12 funding over the span of the grant. Yes, I know this creates additional work for everyone, but I think we can all agree we're thankful for the additional funding during these challenging economic times.

As we have identified before, we have a very small window to collect the 2008-09 SFSF expenditure data. The collection opens on Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 1:00 PM and closes on Monday, March 1, 2010.

If you have questions about this collection, please contact Barbara Cruickshank at Barbara.cruickshank at state.or.us<mailto:Barbara.cruickshank at state.or.us> or Michael Wiltfong at michael.wiltfong at state.or.us<mailto:michael.wiltfong at state.or.us> . The ODE Helpdesk<mailto:ODE.Helpdesk at state.or.us> is also available to help with questions.

Please know your cooperation to collect this data is greatly appreciated. Thank you.






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