PRIORITY AND TIME SENSITIVE: ARRA Monthly Reporting Due Oct. 2

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act FY 2010 Monthly Reporting

INFORMATIONAL LETTER: 32
POLICY CODE: LG/EF

TO: Superintendents of Schools, Business Managers
FROM: Susan A. Gendron, Commissioner
DATE: September 25, 2009
RE: PRIORITY AND TIME SENSITIVE: ARRA Monthly Reporting Due Oct. 2

The Governor has requested that all State agencies provide monthly reporting of ARRA expenditures so that the State can be very transparent on the expenditure of the ARRA funds.

Due to the tight federal requirements and recent notification to state departments of education about those requirements, the first report is due on Oct. 2.

This letter also contains information about two conference calls that have been arranged to explain the web-based form you will use to report.

The Department of Education has developed a web-based report template to be completed by each school administrative unit for each of the ARRA federal awards. The web-based report template will be posted Monday morning, September 28th. The template can be accessed at:

https://www.medms.maine.gov/MEDMS/MEDMS_Welcome.aspx

After you enter your ID and Password you will see ARRA Data at the top. If you cannot see that call the MEDMS Help Desk at 624-6896.

This first set of reports should be completed by Friday, October 2nd, so that we can post to the State’s ARRA Recovery Web page by October 5th.

Thereafter, the template should be completed by the 30th of each month, so that we can populate the expense records for the Department of Education. The first three elements of the template – School Administrative Unit(SAU), Federal Award and Month - have drop down lists to choose from. The SAU address, city, state and zip code will automatically be populated when you choose your SAU. You will then need to select whether your individual expenditures for each federal award for that month have been less that $25,000 or $25,000 or greater. If your expenditures are less than $25,000 you will indicate the number of expenditures and the total amount of those expenditures. For individual expenditures to an individual vendor that are $25,000 or greater, you will need to indicate the amount, a short description of the project, the vendor name and vendor zip code. We also need to have you report the jobs that you retained and or the number of limited period positions you created. The jobs retained are defined as positions that you “pink slipped” or planned to “pink slip”, but were able to maintain because of ARRA funding that either directly pays for that position or is used elsewhere to free up funds to retain that position. The limited period positions are defined as new positions that are funded for a period of the ARRA funding not to exceed September 30, 2011.

Jaci Holmes, the Department’s ARRA Coordinator, has scheduled a conference call on Monday, September 28th at 3:30 PM and on September 29th at 10 AM to go over the web-based form.

Call in number: 1-866-502-8312
Participant Passcode: 162293

If you have further questions following the conference call, you can call Jaci Holmes at 624-6669 or email at jaci.holmes@maine.gov .