October 25, 2023

The Transition of Unexpended Prior-Year Federal Special Education Funds from State Educational Record View and Submission (SERVS) to Minnesota Education Grants System (MEGS)

To: Special Education Directors, Business Managers, SEDRA Contacts
From: Division of School Finance

In order for the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) to move prior year federal special education funds from State Fiscal Year (SFY) 2022 and SFY 2023 from SERVS over to MEGS, Local Educational Agencies (LEAs) will need to log into SERVS Financial to balance forward their funds into SFY 2024. Go to menu option: Manage Allocations/Competitive Awards, under Actions, select Edit Award/Allocation. You can then balance forward the unexpended dollar amounts into SFY 2024 for those finance codes that need to be moved over to MEGS. The Amount for Budget cannot exceed the Amount after Adjustments.

Please make sure SFY 2023 has been reconciled with the Uniform Financial Accounting and Reporting Standards (UFARS) and Special Education Data Reporting SEDRA and the final payments from SERVS have cleared with no budget errors. The Special Education/UFARS Comparison Report is being posted daily.

Reports are located on the MDE website (https://education.mn.gov/) > Data Center > Data Reports and Analytics > Under School Finance Reports, select Minnesota Funding Reports (MFR) > Category: Special Education > Year 22-23. This report is titled Special Education/UFARS Comparison.

The deadline to obligate SFY 2022 funds was September 30, 2023, and the final draw deadline is December 11, 2023. Even though SFY 2024 allocations have been loaded into MEGS, we ask that you do not request any reimbursement requests in MEGS until the prior-year funds have been transitioned over from SERVS Financial to ensure the oldest funds are drawn first.

Please keep in mind this does not affect the American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds, (i.e., FIN 140, 141, 143 and FIN 144). These funds will remain in SERVS Financial and need to be drawn by December 11, 2023. If the ARP funds have been balanced forward into SFY 2024 in SERVS Financial, then you need to make sure the corresponding grant application has been approved and the Identified Official with Authority (IOwA) has accepted the award in order for the SEDRA budget to flow through to SERVS Financial to be able to make the draw request by the deadline.

If you have questions, please contact the Division of School Finance, Special Education Funding and Data team at mde.spedfunding@state.mn.us.