Hello everyone!  

Welcome to the fourth issue of the Impact Aid Director’s Quarterly Update.  

As of today, the team has completed 97% of initial monitoring reviews for fiscal year (FY) 2025 and 68% of our final reviews. We are on track to make initial payments for FY 2025, contingent a full appropriation on October 1, 2024, and final payments by Spring 2025. All remaining FY 2024 blocked payments are scheduled for release after October 1, 2024. 

Start early! Now is a good time to start thinking about preparing for your FY 2026 Impact Aid application. We encourage you to read through our best practice tips and consider participating in one of our upcoming technical assistance opportunities listed below. The upcoming training session can be found on our portal under here. 

Our brand-new Impact Aid Handbook is also an excellent resource. The handbook gives a broad overview of Impact Aid basics and answers frequently asked questions, with citations to the program statute and regulations. In our annual Grantee Satisfaction Survey, we’ve received comments over the years to revive the handbook (the old “yellow book”), and this year we were able to fulfill that request. We hope you find it useful. 

We wish you a wonderful start to the new school year! 

Early Payment Requests 

If your local educational agency (LEA) must receive your first FY 2025 Impact Aid payment before the end of December 2024 to meet its expenses, please let us know by requesting an early payment in the Impact Aid Grant System (IAGS). If we are operating under a Continuing Resolution for the start of FY 2025, meaning that we receive a small percentage of our 2024 appropriated funds rather than the full appropriation for the year, we will prioritize initial payments for LEAs that need them the most. Please note that the button to request an early payment has moved from the IAGS payment history page to the application page. See the new user guide for instructions with screenshots. 

Special Team Spotlight – Electronic Data Collection (EDC) Team 

This quarter we recognize our EDC team who provides technical assistance to LEAs in their first year (called the pilot year) and beyond. The team consists of team lead Shaunton Alston, Kisha Spruill, and Robin Gregory. EDC allows LEAs to use their student information system to collect survey data for their Impact Aid application. The primary purpose is to enhance efficiency and assist in producing accurate, complete, and validated data for the LEA’s application. Currently, 58 LEAs are participating in EDC. Kudos to the team for their work in this process. If you wish to explore this option for your LEA, please contact our EDC team at edcpilot@ed.gov.  

Impact Aid Best Practices:  Survey Method  

Have you reviewed your survey method recently?  If it has been a while, now is a great time to review your methods. For best results, we suggest you:  

• View our on demand video here on how to conduct a survey.  

• Participate in a virtual training. The schedule is listed below and always available on our website.  

• Reach out to your LEA’s state analyst, who can recommend the best survey method based on the federally connected categories you claim.  

Upcoming Webinars  

Join the Impact Aid staff in an upcoming webinar. Please see below. Our webinars are FREE and open to all.  

As always, reach out to us anytime for assistance, and feel free to contact your program analyst directly.

Faatimah Muhammad  

Director, Impact Aid