May 2021

Table of Contents

• Financial
• Medicaid
• Applications
• General Information
• Upcoming Deadlines

Financial

Perkins Consortium and Regional Planning Partnerships Accounting

Districts that are part of a Perkins consortium or Regional Planning Partnership (RPP) should expect to receive some journal entries from the fiscal agent to record in the district’s records, including transactions done by the fiscal agent on behalf of the consortium or partnership. The School Business Operations Bureau worked with the Department’s Bureau of Career and Technical Education on the documents Accounting for Perkins Funds: Consortia (currently under revision) and Accounting Guidance for Regional Planning Partnerships.

For Perkins question, please contact Dennis Harden at dennis.harden@iowa.gov or 515-281-4716.
For RPP questions, please contact Jane Bradley at jane.bradley@iowa.gov or 515-281-4707.
For coding questions, please contact Janice Evans at janice.evans@iowa.gov or 515-281-4740.

Limited English Proficiency Allowable Cost

Although the Limited English Proficiency (LEP) Allowable Cost application is not available until September, it is important to remember data supporting the application come from various 2020-2021 applications.

When coding FY21 expenditures, remember to continue to code LEP expenditures to program codes 410-419, even when expenditures exceed the cost of revenues coded to project 1112 or 4644. For excess expenditures, change the project code to 0000, but do not change the program codes from 410–419. The only expenditures to be included in the LEP Allowable Cost application will be those coded to the program code of 410-419.

If you need assistance with coding questions, please contact Janice Evans at janice.evans@iowa.gov or 515-281-4740, or Denise Ragias at denise.ragias@iowa.gov or 515-281-4741.

Indirect Cost Rates 

Indirect cost rates for FY21-22 federal programs should be available by the end of May or the first part of June.

If you have further questions, please contact Janice Evans at janice.evans@iowa.gov or 515-281-4740.

New Legislative Action: Student Activity Fund Transfer

On May 10, 2021, Governor Reynolds signed HF602, which went into effective upon enactment. This legislation authorizes a school district’s board of directors, through a board resolution, to transfer from the General Fund to the Student Activity Fund an amount necessary, as recommended by the superintendent, to fund co-curricular or extracurricular activities for which moneys from student-related activities (e.g., admissions, student fundraising events) were insufficient to meet the financial needs of the activity as a result of restrictions placed on the activity related to the COVD-19 pandemic.

This authority is effective during the following fiscal years: 2021, 2022, and 2023. The authority is set to be repealed effective July 1, 2023 (FY24). The full bill is available on the Iowa Legislature website.

If you have further questions, please contact Kassandra Cline at kassandra.cline@iowa.gov or 515-281-4738.

Iowa Chart of Account Coding Updates

The Iowa Chart of Account Coding is regularly updated to reflect changes necessary to meet fiscal reporting needs. The most recent updates are provided below.

Medicaid

Change of District Medicaid Lead

If your district will have a new lead for School-Based Medicaid for 2021-2022, please have them contact Jim Donoghue at jim.donoghue@iowa.gov or 515-281-8505 to arrange an orientation and question and answer call.

Applications

Nonpublic Transportation Reimbursement Application

The newly revised Nonpublic Transportation Reimbursement Application opened for data input on May 15. Please double-check the data and certify the application by June 15. If you entered data in the system prior to May 15, that information was deleted when the system opened and will need to be reentered. The Department of Education intends to issue reimbursements to districts in July, but will need to have all district data in by June 15 to meet this goal.

The reimbursement application is accessed at the Iowa Education Portal, while all information pertaining to the nonpublic transportation reimbursement process is found at the Nonpublic Reimbursement page of the Department’s website.

If you have further questions, please contact Max Christensen at max.christensen@iowa.gov or 515-281-4749.

Billing for Concurrent Enrollment Supplementary Weighting for Open Enrolled Students

Districts offering concurrent enrollment courses and eligible Project Lead the Way (PLTW) courses may bill resident districts for the supplementary weighting generated on open-enrolled students enrolled in the contracted courses. Bills for the supplementary weighting can be generated using the information provided in the Student Reporting in Iowa (SRI) application. Before paying a bill for supplementary weighting, the resident district can verify the information by reviewing the Supplementary Weighting (Non-Fall) application in the Iowa Education Portal. When computing the supplementary weighting, use the student’s resident district cost per pupil of the year in which the course was taken. Directions for generating and verifying the bills are located on the Supplementary Weighting – Certified Enrollment page of the Department of Education's website (281 IAC 17.10(8)).

Student Reporting in Iowa (SRI) data are preliminary data until the reporting district’s last day of school. While the SRI application is scheduled to open for final reporting on May 12, the year may not have ended for districts by then. Concurrent enrollment information should not change between May 12 and the end of the school year, since most community colleges will have already ended their school year. Be sure to bill the resident districts of your open enrolled students after the Non-Fall Supplementary Weighting application is available.

If you have questions regarding billing for concurrent enrollment supplementary weighting, please contact Carla Schimelfenig at carla.schimelfenig@iowa.gov  or 515-242-5612.

Psychiatric Medical Institutions for Children Placements and Placements in a Hospital’s Psychiatric Unit (Foster Care Claim)

Many psychiatric medical intuitions for children (PMIC) placements are parent placements and not placements by the Department of Human Services (DHS) or the Iowa Juvenile Court System (JCS). Iowa Code 282.27, Children living in psychiatric hospitals or institutions, was changed in 2015 to allow PMIC-placed students to be included in the Foster Care Claim process. Subsection 5 states, “If a child placed in the psychiatric unit or institution was not enrolled in the educational program of the district of residence of the child on October 1 of the current school year, the district of residence may include that student in a (foster care) claim submitted to the department of education pursuant to section 282.31, subsection 1, paragraph “b”, subparagraph (2).”

Each district must do to ensure accurate reporting of PMIC-placements in the Foster Care Claim application:

    1.  Identify students for whom your district received a bill from another district because of a hospital stay           involving the student’s placement in a hospital’s psychiatric ward. Then, determine if the student was           included in your district’s certified enrollment count.

    2.  For any students identified above who were NOT in your district’s certified enrollment count, either:

• Enter the student as a new student in the district’s student information system and show enrollment corresponding to the period of time of the placement with a service/facility type of 2 and service provider/facility code of 97777777. This will usually be for students who are homeschooled, attend a nonpublic school, or resident individuals who dropped out of school and were not enrolled on count date. During a hospital stay while placed in a psychiatric ward, the student is considered a public school student and must be entered into the student information system with an entry code of 1. Exit the student using the date when the student ended the hospital stay and an exit code to show the current status of the student (transferred to home school, transferred to a nonpublic school, dropped out of school).

Or

• Add a new enrollment record for any student already in your system for the period of time the student was placed in the hospital’s psychiatric unit. The service/facility type field must be identified as 2 (PMIC placement) with a service provider/facility code of 97777777 (hospital psychiatric ward).

    3.  Add a new enrollment record for any student already in your system for the period of time the                       student was placed

If you have further questions regarding PMIC placement foster care reimbursements, please contact Carla Schimelfenig at carla.schimelfenig@iowa.gov or 515-242-5612.

Operational Sharing for 2021-2022

On May 20, 2021, Governor Reynolds signed House File 847, which added special education director and work-based learning coordinator to the list of eligible positions for generating operational sharing supplementary weighting. In addition, the bill reduces the full-time equivalency weightings for all positions except the sharing of a superintendent, by one FTE. The proposed legislation will not impact the generation of 8 FTEs for the sharing of a superintendent. However, the positions that currently generate 5 FTEs are reduced to 4 FTEs (business management, transportation director, operations and maintenance director, and human resources director), while the positions that currently generate 3 FTS are reduced to 2 FTEs (counselor, curriculum director, social worker, and the newly proposed positions of special education director and work-based learning coordinator).

Below are some tips to help ensure integrity in the sharing of these positions and provide transparency for your communities:

1. Have the agreement in place, approved, and commencing on the normal start date for the position based on the length of the contract for a returning employee in that position.
2. The entity holding the contract does not give away a portion of their employee’s contract. The purchasing entity must pay for the portion of the contract that is being purchased (minimum 20% of salary and benefits is required for the sharing to be an eligible sharing arrangement for supplementary weighting).
3. Any new contract with a governmental entity that is NOT another Iowa public school district or AEA must include the responsibilities the person will perform for each organization or be available for review by the Department of Education. Any questions or concerns about the eligibility for supplementary weighting should be discussed with the Department of Education prior to the signing of the agreement to allow for modifications to the contract if the sharing is dependent on the generation of supplementary weighting.
4. Continuing agreements that will not be changing do not need to be revisited, unless concerns arose regarding the agreement in the previous year.
5. If five districts enter into an agreement to share a position at 20% each, but the sharing does not start until October 1, the sharing among the five entities would not be an eligible arrangement. For a 12-month position, 25% of the year would have transpired. Only 75% of the remaining contract would be eligible to be shared. Even four districts sharing the remaining 75% would not result in each of the districts receiving 20% of the contract. The same would be true for a 10-month contract running August through May. If the sharing does not begin until October, only 80% of the full-time contract remains. Therefore, only four districts would be eligible to purchase 20% of the remaining portion of the full-time position. To avoid any questions of impropriety, the sharing arrangements must be in place at the beginning of the full-time employee’s contractual year.
6. All eligible operational function sharing arrangements must be entered correctly in Fall BEDS next fall. This includes:

Providing the appropriate position of the individual being shared.

Identifying the sharing status as either the contract holder or the district purchasing services.

Reporting salary and benefits to be paid by your district with the contract holder reporting the full amount and the district purchasing the services reporting their portion of the salary and benefits.

Identifying the sharing partner(s).

Reporting the individual’s FTE with the contract holder reporting the full amount and the district purchasing the services reporting their portion of the FTE.

If you have further questions regarding operational function sharing, please contact Tom Cooley at tom.cooley@iowa.gov or 515-725-1120.

FY21 Chart of Accounts Test Records 

The CAR 2021 COA Test Records application should be available by the end of May or first part of June to all districts as the Department continues to update the program. During the test period, some edits and warnings may not be working properly, so they may change as corrections are made. When the application first opens only stages 1 and 2 will be updated. Successful completion of these two stages validates the composition of the account code. Stages 3 and 4 will be available but may change as we continue to work on updates. Any known edits or warnings not working properly will be noted on the Home page. Districts are encouraged to start uploading and correcting their books as soon as the application is available. A district may test an individual account code or an entire file in accordance with the 2021 COA-CAR rules. The test site mirrors the “live” site, with the inclusion of the reports when they are updated. The application will be available on the Iowa Education Portal. Once logged in, go to EdInfo, Finance Applications.

Many of the COA-CAR edits are programmed to check tables for information. These tables may not be completely loaded during the testing period. This information is entered as we receive it; therefore, there may be some edit messages that appear during testing that normally would not. The incomplete tables are noted on the Home page of the application. Also, districts may get many Stage 4 reconciliation messages as all revenue, receivables, or restricted fund balances would not be entered prior to the end of the fiscal year.

We strongly urge districts to test their files early and often. Please be sure to update your financial software to the most current version before creating a text file. Districts should not “fix their books” just to pass edits, as the edit may need to be modified.

If you come across issues with the upload or edits and/or warning messages, that don’t make sense or don’t seem to be working properly, please contact Denise Ragias at denise.ragias@iowa.gov or 515-281-4741.

If you have coding questions, please contact Janice Evans at janice.evans@iowa.gov or 515-281-4740.

General Information

District Information

Much of the communication to superintendents and business managers from the Department of Education is done via e-mail. This allows the Department to provide timely communication. If you are not planning on being with the district next year, please email Carolyn Engelhardt at carolyn.engelhardt@iowa.gov. If you know your replacement and the replacement’s email address, we would appreciate that information as well.

Upcoming Deadlines

Current and past issues of the School Leader Update.
Current and past issues of the School Business Alert.

If you have suggestions for future SBA articles, please submit them to Carolyn Engelhardt at carolyn.engelhardt@iowa.gov.

It is the policy of the Iowa Department of Education not to discriminate on the basis of race, creed, color, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, sex, disability, religion, age, political party affiliation, or actual or potential parental, family or marital status in its programs, activities, or employment practices as required by the Iowa Code sections 216.9 and 256.10(2), Titles VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C. § 2000d and 2000e), the Equal Pay Act of 1973 (29 U.S.C. § 206, et seq.), Title IX (Educational Amendments, 20 U.S.C.§§ 1681 – 1688), Section 504 (Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 29 U.S.C. § 794), and the Americans with Disabilities Act (42 U.S.C. § 12101, et seq.). If you have questions or complaints related to compliance with this policy by the Iowa Department of Education, please contact the legal counsel for the Iowa Department of Education, Grimes State Office Building, 400 E. 14^th Street, Des Moines, IA 50319-0146, telephone number: 515-281-5295, or the Director of the Office for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Education, Citigroup Center, 500 W. Madison Street, Suite 1475, Chicago, IL 60661-4544, telephone number: 312-730-1560, FAX number: 312-730-1576, TDD number: 877-521-2172, email: OCR.Chicago@ed.gov.