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The Official Newsletter for School Certifying Officials |
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Leadership Corner
 Greetings GI Bill Partners,
In our last edition of the School Certifying Official (SCO) newsletter I spoke about my experience filming the fourth video of the State of Education Service series. I am excited to notify you that the Platform and Technology Enhancement video has been uploaded to our YouTube channel and is ready for you to view.
Beyond updates to our platforms and technology, I am proud to announce that for the second time in three years, Education Service was presented the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) Customer Experience (CX) award. Education Service was recognized for its Customer Service team, for their efforts in ensuring Education Service provides excellent service to Veterans, service members and other stakeholders when applying for educational benefits. I mention this to showcase how Education Service continues to strive to continuously improve and how those efforts are being recognized on a national level.
Our continuous improvement here at VA would be impossible without all the hard work you do, every day, in your essential role in helping Veterans, service members and their dependents receive their hard-earned benefits. I look forward to continuing to work with you and accomplishing great things.
Respectfully,
Joseph Garcia, Executive Director Education Service
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School Certifying Official (SCO) Handbook redesign
 During the spring VA sent a survey to SCOs regarding the SCO Handbook. The survey was released to over 17,000 SCOs, and VA received over 2,500 responses. VA will use these responses to help guide us as we begin a formal redesign of the SCO Handbook.
We will keep you informed as we have specific updates on the redesign and will notify SCOs via GovDelivery once edits have been made to the SCO Handbook.
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Subscribe to receive all our updates!
Did you receive this newsletter as a forwarded message? As a reminder, you must be subscribed to our GovDelivery email list to receive routine communications (such as webinar invites or office hour notes) from Education Service.
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Fiscal year (FY) 2025 training window open
The FY 2025 training window opened October 1, 2024, and will close on August 31, 2025.
Section 305 of the Harry W. Colmery Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2017, also known as the “Colmery Act,” requires VA, in consultation with State Approving Agencies, to develop and administer required training for SCOs at covered educational institutions.
A “covered educational institution” is an educational institution that has enrolled 20 or more individuals using educational assistance under Title 38, United States Code, during the previous calendar year. You can verify if your school is a covered educational institution by reviewing the covered educational institutions list.
In addition to existing SCOs at covered educational institutions, all new SCOs must complete required online training based on their facility or program type to gain access to certify enrollments to VA.
For more information, please visit our SCO training webpage.
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GI Bill Roadshow: San Diego State University and St. Philip’s College
In September, Education Service traveled to San Diego State University and St. Philip’s College to host SCO Workshops, as a part of our GI Bill Roadshow to meet face-to-face with schools and GI Bill® students. Over 100 SCOs attended these workshops to learn more about Enrollment Manager updates, receive one-on-one support from VBA and connect with other SCOs.
One SCO attendee shared, “We appreciate the updated features that Enrollment Manager has offered. The system as a whole has been much more stable since the implementation of the Digital GI Bill.”
Education Service enjoyed meeting SCOs in-person and greatly appreciated hearing your feedback. Stay tuned for key answers to your SCO Workshop frequently asked questions (FAQ) in the next newsletter!
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Enrollment Manager updates
We heard you! On September 28, we introduced updates to Enrollment Manager. A few top-priority updates introduce the ability to:
- Print all documents from an enrollment period at once.
- Set an active or inactive status for a student.
- Terminate all future enrollments at once.
Additional updates include:
- New language for select remarks.
- Enhanced ability to search and identify duplicate preset enrollments.
- Improved ability to revisit the same enrollment period after printing an enrollment from that period.
These updates are included in the Enrollment Manager FAQs and SCO Enrollment Manager User Guide. To see these specific changes, check out the change logs and look for sections that have the “New” or “Updated” tags flagging changes.
Additionally, we hope you enjoy the visual improvements across the EM FAQ website. Updates for a streamlined FAQ website experience include:
- A new user-centered website display.
- A search bar enabling users to look up Enrollment Manager questions.
- Seven categorized topics differentiating Enrollment Manager FAQs.
You can find Enrollment Manager updates reflected in the Enrollment Manager FAQs and the SCO Enrollment Manager User Guide, providing you with the latest information to support your daily work tasks.
Learn more about recent updates to Enrollment Manager on the system updates webpage.
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Disaster relief and VA
 Severe weather has impacted millions of Americans this year. It is important for Veterans, service members and their families to know that VA is here to help. We ask you to share the following resources with your Veteran and service member students to ensure they have the information available in case an emergency situation occurs.
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How VA kept everyone in the know
Education Service often releases targeted messaging through GovDelivery to provide important information to both SCOs and GI Bill beneficiaries. We highly encourage you to sign up through GovDelivery to receive the mass messages Education Service releases in real time.
To ensure that you have access to these messages though, curated messages are available on our GI Bill webpage. Please use the links on the webpage to access workbooks containing archived content released via the GovDelivery mailing list. We routinely update the current year's spreadsheet but please note that it is not updated in real-time.
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US Department of Veterans Affairs
Veterans Benefits Administration
1-888-442-4551, TDD: 711
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Do you have a question or concern about GI Bill benefits? Contact us safely and securely with Ask VA! |
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