Preliminary Allocation and Entitlement Grant Amounts

Enclosed you will find your school system's preliminary grant amounts for those allocation and entitlement programs you administer. While we have yet to receive formal written notice from the United States Department of Education (USED), we have been notified verbally regarding these amounts. We have been conservative in our calculations so that while we know that further adjustments may need to be made, we are confident that the enclosed figures are minimums. In addition, the President's recent veto has allowed us to include a dollar amount for the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program.

In the case of special education and early childhood special education, I am pleased that we are able to increase the per student allocation over that stated in April. We had projected $300/student for special education and $440-450 for early childhood special education. Based on Massachusetts' allocation from USED, we are able to increase the amount for these two programs to $335/student and $515/student, respectively. While this is still less than the per student amount available in FY95, it is a smaller reduction than had been anticipated.

In the case of the Health Protection Funds, the recent language coming from the conference committee discussions has provided level funding for this program and the Department will retain the same minimum level of funding and maximum level of funding as during FY95. However, with increased enrollments in K-12 programs, the per child allocation, which forms the basis for the majority of district allocations, will be reduced from $28.50 to slightly over $27.27/student.

This year has been unusual due to the rescission discussions occurring at the national level. I know that it has been difficult for you to complete your planning and staffing decisions for the upcoming school year without the grant funding information. It has been frustrating for us to be unable to provide you with funding information in a more timely manner. We are here to assist you in whatever way we can to facilitate the submission and processing of your grant applications so that funds can flow as soon as possible. We will not be setting a grant submission deadline but will respond to applications as they are submitted. The sooner the application is submitted, the sooner it can be reviewed and funds released. If allocation adjustments are necessary, we will inform you regarding the process to be followed in order to amend the grant amount.

Applications should be mailed to:
Massachusetts Department of Education
Grants Management
350 Main Street
Malden, MA 02148-5023

If you have any programmatic questions, please contact the appropriate Department liaison for your community. I thank you for your patience and continued support.