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The Official Newsletter for School Certifying Officials |
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Leadership Corner
Greetings GI Bill® Partners,
The Annual Benefits Report is routinely updated in February, summarizing the benefit programs delivered by the Veterans Benefits Administration during the prior fiscal year (FY). Last year, I shared some of the milestones that we have achieved with our administration and delivery of the Post-9/11 GI Bill. The Education Service (EDU) staff is in the process of calculating figures for FY 2024. From paying over $63 million to 34,393 beneficiaries in 2009, the first fiscal year of Post-9/11 GI Bill, to paying well over $4 billion to 564,665 beneficiaries in FY 2023, we expect to see continued growth for 2024 and beyond.
These figures showcase the staggering number of Veterans, service members, and their families that we, together, continue to support. What no Excel spreadsheet can calculate though is the day-to-day differences each of you make to the students you support. Your care and concern mirror that of our dedicated Education Service staff, as you adapt and evolve as our systems and procedures change to meet the needs of a modern world.
As always, I would like to thank you for all 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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Release 7 introduces GI Bill updates
Release 7 of the Digital GI Bill was deployed Saturday, December 7. This release introduces the initial operating capability of Benefits Manager, the new claims processing system for new Montgomery GI Bill Active Duty (Chapter 30), Montgomery GI Bill Selected Reserve (Chapter 1606), and Survivors’ and Dependents’ Educational Assistance (Chapter 35) beneficiaries. Starting in January 2025, Education Service will begin processing claims in Benefits Manager through a controlled approach, which will minorly impact how enrollment information appears in Enrollment Manager. More details on this approach are available in the Release 7 Impacts to Enrollment Manager Guide for School Certifying Officials (SCOs).
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Requesting the 35 percent exemption
 For all school types, the 35 percent exemption expires 24 months from the date of issue.
Schools interested in receiving or renewing an existing 35 percent exemption must include the following completed document(s) for the corresponding reporting period in their request to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) via the Education File Upload Portal:
All schools must submit the 35% Exemption Request From 85/15 Reporting Requirement.
Nonaccredited schools must, also, submit the 85/15 report for the corresponding reporting period.
In accordance with 38 CFR 21.4201, the school must submit applications for renewal in accordance with the following guidance:
- Schools organized on a term, quarter, or semester basis must make that submission no later than 30 days after the beginning of the first term for which the school wants the exemption to apply.
- Schools organized on a non-standard term basis must make its submission no later than 30 days after the beginning of the first non-standard term for which the school wishes the exemption to apply.
Regardless of accreditation status, schools must retain all documents supporting the calculations for the 35 percent exemption and, if nonaccredited or without the 35 percent exemption, documents supporting 85/15 calculations. VA representatives will review these documents on compliance.
For more information on the 35 percent exemption, visit our website.
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Calendar of events
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EDU Fireside Chat – January 21, 2025
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Florida Association Of Veterans Education Specialists (FAVES) Flight Conference – January 30, 2025
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Quarterly Office Hours – February 19, 2025, through February 20, 2025
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Texas Association of Collegiate Veteran Program Officials (TACVPO) Conference – February 24, 2025, through February 27, 2025
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Institution of Higher Learning (IHL) SCOOP – February 26, 2025, through February 27, 2025
To view the dates for other upcoming events and webinars, please visit the National Training Team - Schools Training Calendar.
To view the summary and recordings for previous webinars, please visit the Education Service Webinars and Training webpage. All webinar recordings can be found on our webinar playlist.
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Recent Enrollment Manager updates
On Saturday, December 7 Enrollment Manager experienced updates to improve the user experience. A few of the updates include:
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The “STEM” checkbox on the Program card has been relabeled to “STEM Scholarship Student” to clarify that this checkbox should only be used for those receiving the scholarship, not all STEM students.
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The “Award status” column has been removed from the Benefits Tab since it is not a relevant field in Benefits Manager.
- For benefits other than the Post-9/11 GI Bill, a new automatically generated remark will be inserted when you change only the dates, or the tuition and fees. This was added to aid in system processing of these cases. These new remarks are:
- "Automatic remark - Change reason: Tuition and fees"
- "Automatic remark - Change reason: Enrollment date change"
During the December 7 update a system issue was identified due to Release 7. When searching for a student, either in “Search My Student” or “Search All Students” and the student has a space in their name, there are errors. It is expected that this issue will be corrected in Release 7.1 in March 2025.
Example: if a student's first name is “Sara Beth” and their last name is “Smith”, searching Sara Beth Smith will not pull any results. A work around for this error is to just use the first name minus the space and any additional names. In this example, by using just “Sara” Enrollment Manager will pull all beneficiaries with the name Sara, Sara Beth, Sara Sue, etc.
Log in to Enrollment Manager to experience these updates today. Learn more about recent updates to Enrollment Manager on the system updates webpage.
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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.
You can find a curated list of previous messages in our GovDelivery Message Archive. VA routinely updates the spreadsheet for the current year to include the most recent releases, but updates are not made in real-time.
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Reminder: recommended SCO to student ratio
 Last year, in December of 2023, VA formally released its suggested ratio of full-time SCOs to GI Bill beneficiary students. That suggested ratio is one full-time SCO to every 125 GI Bill students at the educational institution. This ratio for SCO support is a recommendation only, and the number of SCOs should be adjusted as appropriate by an educational institution to reflect additional SCO responsibilities beyond certifying GI Bill enrollments, including the administration of other Veteran education programs.
This recommendation is formally documented in the SCO Handbook and in the December 4, 2023, letter signed by the Executive Director of Education Service, Joseph Garcia.
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Veteran Readiness and Employment (VR&E) SCO update
The VR&E Office Contact List, located in Section N of the VR&E SCO Handbook, has been updated to add an email mailbox contact for each VR&E Regional Office for SCOs to use when the VR&E case manager is not responding to attempted contacts from SCOs. In addition, information was added in the Certification Process section of the handbook that clarifies that only courses that satisfy requirements outlined by the curriculum guide or graduation evaluation form can be certified for VA purposes. You can access the updated VR&E SCO Handbook here.
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Personalized Career Planning and Guidance: free educational and career counseling
Any student who is eligible for GI Bill benefits is also eligible for Personalized Career Planning and Guidance, a free benefit that provides:
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Career counseling to help students decide which civilian or military jobs they want.
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Educational counseling to help them find a training program or field of study.
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Academic and adjustment counseling to help students address issues or barriers that get in the way of their success.
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Resume support and goal planning.
Students can use this benefit more than once. Please share this information with students and any relevant academic advising offices as you see fit. If students need more information about Personalized Career Planning and Guidance, or want to apply, you can share our webpage on the benefit.
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Guides to help your students use their benefits
Regardless of where your students are in their education journey, VA has a useful resource that can help them make decisions about what to do next. It’s a three-part guide, “Building Your Future with the GI Bill”:
Please share with students as you think will be helpful.
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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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