Good morning,
This is a reminder that the deadline for submitting FCC Form 471 for Funding Year 2021 (fiscal year 2021-2022) is
Thursday, March 25th.
This is the form where you have chosen your service providers and know the cost of your service.
What do I need?
What about the school district lunch numbers?
The great thing about the portal is that the system automatically pulls the free and reduced lunch statistics from the school district that you have indicated in your portal and calculates your discount percentage to input into your form.
So, no need for you to do anything else there.
How hard is this form?
It is the more extensive form in E-Rate, but you can do it! This is because of all the specific data you must input.
*Please remember that if you uploaded your bid documentation because you are going into a contract for any service you’re requesting, you will also need to upload your contract as part of your Form 471 submission. You upload your contract
into your EPC portal by following these steps:
Remember to be sure to keep all your bid documentation (even if there were bids submitted which didn’t meet the requirements outlined in your bid documentation), just in case you’re asked about your process by the Program Integrity Assurance
(PIA) folks. You also want to have create a bid evaluation matrix to show how you evaluated your bids. You can find help with that
here.
Will they allow an extension of the deadline?
According to the Schools and Libraries Division (SLD), the FCC (who is the parent organization over E-rate), there is no indication of any additional extensions currently.
And just in case you need it – here is the EPC Portal link:
https://portal.usac.org/suite/
If you need help with filing and want to review some helpful information/videos from USAC, you can find filing assistance with the 471
here.
Happy filing!
Liz
Liz Thigpen Schreck, Director
Ocoee River Regional Library
State E-rate Coordinator for Public Libraries
Office of Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett
718 George St., NW, Athens, TN 37303
Phone (423) 745-5194 – office; (423) 649-1583 - direct
Regional Toll Free - (855) 692-8186
Fax (423) 649-1501
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