DATE:
July 2008

TO:
Superintendents of Public School Districts and State Aid Designees
District Superintendents (For Information)
New York City Department of Education

FROM:
Andrea Hyary, Bureau Chief
Office of State Aid

SUBJECT:
Collection of 2008-09 State Aid Claims and Projections,
Including the Annual Financial Report Form ST-3, via the
State Aid Management System (SAMS)

IMPORTANT CHANGES FROM LAST YEAR

While the organization and menu structure of this year’s State Aid Claim forms and schedules is unchanged from last year there are two areas of substantive change that should be noted. Please be sure to read any new help text before completing the items to ensure that appropriate data is provided.

IMPORTANT REMINDERS

Schedule F6 – Bus borrowing / amortization – must be submitted separately by September 1, 2008 since the Amortization Schedules for Bus Purchase Debt on file as of September 1, 2008 is used to establish the statewide interest rate for Transportation Capital. If you issued debt for buses between 7/1/07 and 6/30/08, please certify this schedule by September 1, 2008 even if none of your other SAMS forms are complete.

Please be sure to update your district’s contact information displayed on the SAMS Entity Information page.  It is critical that the e-mail address and phone number including extension are correct so that important communications are not misdirected.

LESS THAN EIGHT TEACHER DISTRICTS

If your district is currently classified as a “less than eight teacher” district but you anticipate the possibility of claiming State Aid and/or becoming a “major district” at any time in the near future you should begin submitting state aid claim forms now.  This has become increasingly important since many aid calculations (including Foundation Aid) depend upon data from two to three prior years.

SAMS GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS

All required aid claim documents must be submitted using the State Education Department (SED) SAMS system.

SAMS can be accessed from the State Aid Web site at http://stateaid.nysed.gov or from the main New York State Education Department home page at http://www.nysed.gov (look for the Portal Login at the lower left of this page).

Users with existing SAMS accounts will continue to use their same user ID and password.

The procedures for obtaining new accounts for SAMS and other State Education Department computer systems have changed. Please refer to the announcement(s) to be published on http://www.nysed.gov in the near future.

For detailed SAMS operating instructions, go to the SAMS Information Tab on the State Aid web site. The SAMS Training Manual, Frequently Asked Questions about SAMS, “Introduction to State Aid Management System” slide show and other important tips for working in SAMS can be found there.

SAMS PROCESSING OVERVIEW

As the basis for payment of over $20 billion dollars in State Aid, SED and districts need to work together to maximize the accuracy of all aid claim data.  To meet this goal all SAMS data must be saved and edited.  Next, the edit reports must be reviewed and readied by school district staff.  Once the edit report is marked “ready”, the Superintendent can certify the data. Please note that certification of the official data constitutes submission of the data set. If the SAMS activity log indicates that the edit report for the form set has been certified, then SED has received your submission.

After certification of the “official data,” SED staff reviews each edit report for completeness and ensure that any anomalies detected during the edit process have been addressed.  After SED has completed its review, the data set is deemed “clean” (or “clean with issues”) marking this first “official” submission as minimally acceptable for aid payment and projections.

To revise already cleaned “official” data, you must enter the “revision data area” in which changes can be made, edited and intentionally submitted to SED without affecting the district’s “official” data area.  Once those revisions are accepted (cleaned) by SED, the revised data items move to the “official data area” and are used for aid calculation and payment.  Please be sure to use the submit changes link on the form tree/menu to ensure that revisions are actually transmitted to SED. Just saving a revision will not transmit it to SED.

In summary, district staff need to use the “official” data area for initially preparing, editing and certifying a data set, and will continue to use the “official” data area to submit changes or comments in response to edit “rejection” notices.  Changes in the “revision” data area are only necessary after a data set has been initially “cleaned”.

Since the data required to claim State Aid is extensive, SED has separated the various claim forms and schedules into logical form sets, each of which must be saved, edited, readied, certified and cleaned as described above to complete the aid claim process.

For the 2008-09 aid claim year, SAMS contains the form sets listed below. The following form sets are required for all districts: A, FB, FT and ST-3.  The applicability of the RSU and Schedule F6 depends upon individual district circumstances.

  - Form A and Schedules    

  - Form FB: Building And Miscellaneous and Schedules

  - Form FT: Transportation and Schedules    

  - ST-3 Forms and Schedules (Financial)     

  - RSU Forms and Schedules

  - Schedule F6: Bus Amortization (Submit by 9/1/08 separate from rest of claim if debt for buses was issued between 9/1/07 and 6/30/08)

CERTIFICATION REQUIREMENTS

There are separate electronic certification forms for each form set that must be completed by the Superintendent as part of the submission of State Aid claim forms.  By certifying a form set, the Superintendent’s action constitutes his or her official submission of that data to SED. The electronic signature is the legal equivalent of a handwritten signature.

The Office of the State Comptroller also requires the ST-3 Annual Financial Report certification page to be completed and mailed to the address shown below.  Please do not send this form to the Education Department. This form should be signed by the treasurer and returned to the Office of the State Comptroller at the following address:

State of New York
Office of the State Comptroller
Division of Municipal Affairs
Albany, NY 12236
Attn: Anthony J. Dolan

TIMELY SUBMISSION OF CLAIM DATA

It is important to note that payments can take a week to prepare and are required to be submitted to the Office of the State Comptroller two weeks prior to the mandated payment date. Therefore,claims should be submitted three weeks prior to a mandated payment date (e.g., claim data must be submitted by September 24^th for a payment to be made on or before October 15th in order to ensure that the payment due will be received in October). It is also extremely important that all items receive careful scrutiny in order that misleading or inaccurate information is not ultimately used in State Aid payments or in projections to be released by the Governor and the Legislature.

If all required reports are not received by September 2nd, the school district will be reminded that State Aid apportionments payable to the school district, other than payments to the Teachers Retirement System on the district's behalf, will be withheld pursuant to Section 3604(11) of the Education Law pending receipt of all reports due.  Reminders will be sent to the State Aid Designee first.  Subsequent reminders will also include the school superintendent, the district superintendent, and the president of the board of education.

Please note that you need not wait for completion of your independent audit in order to submit your ST-3 and other claim forms! All form sets can be submitted separately and all data can be revised multiple times after submission.

Importance of Submitting Data Revisions
By Specific Dates

Throughout the legislative cycle each year the Governor and the Legislature use State Aid claims and projections that have been submitted to the Education Department by school districts and BOCES to predict the fiscal impact of various legislative proposals affecting school aid formulas.  The resulting predictions of fiscal impact are only as accurate as the data that has been filed with the Education Department. 

School districts and BOCES, therefore, should review all data submitted on a regularly scheduled basis and submit identified revisions or corrections to the Education Department.  Such a scheduled review should be consistent with Section 305(21)(b) of the Education Law which requires the Commissioner of Education to update that data used by the Governor and the Legislature on November 15, February 15 and May 15.  In order for the Education Department to process all data revisions and corrections received from school districts and BOCES prior to each of these data updates, school districts and BOCES should submit such revisions and corrections to the Department no later than the following specified dates. 

Note: This is a deadline for revisions to already submitted claims, not the deadline for original submission, which is Tuesday, September 2, 2008. In addition, due to lengthier processing time, revisions to capital project costs and SA-139 forms should be submitted by mid-October to affect the November 15th data file.

SUBMISSION OF THE INDEPENDENT AUDIT REPORT

The report of the annual audit of the school district's records by an independent certified public accountant or an independent public accountant (Independent Audit Report) is due in the Department on October 15, 2008 for districts other than the five large dependent city school districts. Please note that upon receipt of the Independent Audit Report, the district must reconcile its financial reports and implement any audit recommendations.  Any resulting changes to the ST-3 or the State Aid forms must be submitted via SAMS to the State Education Department.

The Independent Audit Report should be sent to the following address:  

New York State Education Department
Office of Audit Services
89 Washington Avenue, Room 524 EB
 Albany, NY 12234

CONTACTS FOR QUESTIONS

State Aid office staff are available to provide any assistance you need with your SAMS submission. Please do not hesitate to call. Questions regarding data collection procedures or the data requested should be directed as follows or to an e-mail address listed on the State Aid Web page:

Top of Page