Posted Date:January 30, 2012
| Author: | William Leith, Service Director, Program Management, Federal Student Aid |
Subject: Operational Implementation Guidance - Implementation of 2012-2013 Federal Pell Grant Payment and Disbursement Schedules
In Dear Colleague Letter P-12-01, posted to the Information for Financial Aid Professionals (IFAP) Web site on January 12, 2012, we provided schools with the payment and disbursement schedules for determining Federal Pell Grant (Pell Grant) awards for the 2012-2013 Award Year. These schedules must be used for all 2012-2013 Pell Grant award calculations.
As noted in the Dear Colleague Letter, the maximum Pell Grant award for the 2012-2013 Award Year is $5,550, the same as for the 2011-2012 Award Year. Therefore, for the vast majority of Expected Family Contributions (EFC) there is no change to the Scheduled Award amount. However, because of a recent statutory change, as described in Dear Colleague Letter P-12-01, related to minimum awards, the maximum Pell Grant eligible EFC for 2012-2013 is 4995, less than the 5273 EFC maximum for the 2011-2012 Award Year. The result is that a small number of applicants who would have been Pell Grant eligible for the 2011-2012 Award Year will not be eligible for the 2012-2013 Award Year.
For more information about the Pell Grant payment and disbursement schedules for the 2012-2013 Award Year, refer to Dear Colleague Letter P-12-01.
We have begun the work needed to modify our systems, Web and software products, technical documents, training materials, and publications to reflect the 2012-2013 Pell Grant payment and disbursement schedules. At this time, we want to provide schools with high-level information about the impact on the Central Processing System (CPS), the ISIR Analysis Tool, the Common Origination and Disbursement (COD) System, and the EDExpress for Windows software and the anticipated completion dates for the system modifications.
We present this information in the following order:
Impact on the CPS
Impact on the ISIR Analysis Tool
Impact on the COD System
Impact on EDExpress
Impact on the CPS
Beginning with the February 13, 2012 compute, the CPS will use the 2012-2013 Pell Grant payment and disbursement schedules as established in Dear Colleague Letter P-12-01 to calculate Pell Grant eligibility and estimated Pell Grant Scheduled Award amounts for all new 2012-2013 Free Applications for Federal Student Aid (FAFSAs), as well as for corrections to previously-filed FAFSAs.
As part of the CPS system update, we will also update our Student Aid Report (SAR) print operations and FAFSA on the Web confirmation page functionality to display estimated Pell Grant Scheduled Award amounts based on the recently-posted schedules.
After we implement the changes in the CPS, we will need to reprocess records for students who applied for 2012-2013 before the February 13, 2012 compute and who are not, based upon the new schedules, eligible for a 2012-2013 Pell Grant. When we began processing 2012-2013 FAFSAs on January 3, 2012, we used the 2011-2012 maximum EFC of 5273 to establish Pell Grant eligibility on SARs and in Institutional Student Information Records (ISIRs). As a result of Congress' determination that 4995 is the maximum Pell-eligible EFC for 2012-2013, the CPS will reprocess certain 2012-2013 SARs and ISIRs on February 15, 2012 in order to recalculate 2012-2013 Pell Grant eligibility.
The February 15, 2012 reprocessing will create a new SAR and ISIR transaction for any student with an EFC between 4996 and 5273 to reflect the loss of Pell Grant eligibility. We estimate that fewer than 11,000 students will be affected.
As we get closer to the date of reprocessing, we will communicate further details about the reprocessing through an electronic announcement on the IFAP Web site. This announcement will provide details about how to identify the reprocessed records, including message class information.
Impact on the ISIR Analysis Tool
The 2012-2013 ISIR Analysis Tool, which will be available through the FAA Main Menu of the FAA Access to CPS Online Web site in June 2012, will reflect 2012-2013 Pell Grant awards based on the recently-posted 2012-2013 schedules.
Impact on the COD System
During the period March 9-10, 2012, we plan to implement COD System functionality that supports processing for the 2012-2013 Award Year. We will implement the 2012-2013 Pell Grant payment and disbursement schedules in the COD System during this release. Detailed information about the March 9-10, 2012 COD System update will be provided in a forthcoming electronic announcement on the IFAP Web site.
Impact on EDExpress
EDExpress 2012-2013 Release 1.0, posted to the Federal Student Aid Download (FSAdownload) Web site on January 3, 2012 does not include the 2012-2013 Pell Grant payment and disbursement schedules established in Dear Colleague Letter P-12-01. Release 2.0, scheduled for release in late March 2012, will update the Packaging and Pell Grant modules to use the 2012-2013 schedules when packaging records or calculating Pell Grant award amounts.
EDExpress Packaging users who want to manually add or adjust Pell Grant awards according to the 2012-2013 schedules before Release 2.0 is available must use the Pell Grant payment and disbursement schedules in Dear Colleague Letter P-12-01. After Release 2.0 is available, EDExpress users who already packaged students using Release 1.0 should repackage those students using Release 2.0 to ensure an accurate Pell award.
Contact Information
If you have questions regarding the updates to the CPS, the ISIR Analysis Tool, or EDExpress, contact CPS/SAIG Technical Support at 800/330-5947 (TDD/TTY 800/511-5806) or by e-mail at CPSSAIG@ed.gov.
If you have questions regarding the updates to the COD System, contact the COD School Relations Center at 800/474-7268 or by e-mail at CODSupport@acs-inc.com.