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NTT DATA INC (US)Moderator: Christal SimmsAugust 16, 201812:00 pm CTCoordinator:Welcome and thank you for standing by. At this time, all parties are in a listen-only mode for the duration of the conference. Today's conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I'd like to turn this over to Ms. (Miesha Challenger). Ma'am, you may begin.(Miesha Challenger):Good afternoon everyone. We want to welcome you to our Federal Student Aid policy updated webinar for 2018. Again, my name is (Miesha Challenger) and I'm an awareness and outreach specialist here at Federal Student Aid. We are so excited that you are able to join us today. We are going to share with you some great resources, bring you individuals who are out in the field, financial aid administrators, college access professionals, all those individuals that are working in students and universities and high schools. And we are really appreciative that you've taken the time today to hear some really valuable information. The 2019/2020 FAFSA is right around the corner. October 1 is literally almost less than two months away. So again, this information will be very beneficial to you all that working with families to help increase awareness about financial aid and the FAFSA form. So let's get started..So just a quick overview of what's going to take place during our webinar today. We're going to get a federal policy update which of course is going to be given by (Craig Munier) the Assistant Director for Policy Liaison and Implementation here at FSA. I'm going to give you, once you conducted his portion of the presentation, I'm going to talk about some online resources for counselors and mentors. And then were going to answer your questions.I want to make note that as you all can see, the PDF for our presentation can be downloaded at the top left-hand corner of your screen. And while we are presenting, there will be individuals who will be answering your questions. So please if you have any questions about the content, feel free to post your question in the Q&A in the chat and we will respond to you, okay?At this time, I would like to turn it over to (Craig Munier) who will give you our federal student aid policy update. (Craig)?(Craig Munier):Great, thank you for, (Miesha). And welcome to everyone on the call. Good morning or good afternoon, depending on where you are in the region of the country. Pleased to be here with you today.We're going to start out with the regulatory update. This administration has at least initially focused our regulatory efforts on three areas. One is the elimination of outdated guidance, which I'll talk about in a little bit, borrower defense to repayment and gainful employment regulations. To date, we've identified nearly 400 dear colleague letters that our no longer - that are out of date, no longer applicable for guidance that institutions no longer need to follow. We're continuing to review that guidance and will be indicating some additional dear colleague letters in the near term that we have identified that are in that same category of records that are no longer applicable.The borrower defense, as you know, in 2016 the department published regulations regarding borrower defense that were scheduled to go into effect July 1, 2017. The department has also published an inner rule that delayed that effective date to July 2018. And then a final rule last February that delayed that of effective date yet again on selected provisions until July 1, 2019. We held three negotiated rulemaking sessions. The date of which you can see on the screen before you, and those negotiations concluded without consensus being reached. The department published a notice of proposed rulemaking just recently and comment on that are due August 30, 2018.On October 31 of 2014, the department published a final gainful employment regulation that went into effect July 1, 2015. We established, as you'll recall a debt to earnings ratio measure to determine whether a program prepares students for gainful employment in a recognized occupation as well as required institutions to report information about students enrolled in each of their gainful employment programs.We, additionally, required institutions to establish eligibility of a gainful employment program by certifying that the program was included in the institution certification and satisfied your applicable state licensing or certification requirements for the occupation that the program was intended to prepare students to enter.We formed a committee to negotiate those gainful employment rules. We held three rounds of negotiations back in late 2017, early 2018. And again, those negotiations concluded without consensus being reached. We just published this week August 14, which was just two days ago now in the Federal Register a new a notice of proposed of proposed rulemaking. Comments on that are due September 13. And remember, this is just a proposed rule. Those comments will be received from now through 13 September and then we will issue a final rule following that comment period.State authorization was current effective July 1 of 2018. We published a notice of proposed rulemaking back in May of this year proposing to delay that effective date to July 1 of 2020. There was a 15-day comment period that ended on June 30 of this year. And on December 19, we published regulations relating to the state authorization of distance education providers. Most recently the department published a final rule earlier this summer. We refer you to that.Some other upcoming regulations and regulatory actions that we are going to be holding hearings on affect accreditation, state authorization, ensuring student access to high-quality and innovative programs, updating regulations related to GANN, Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need, as well as the eligibility of faith-based entities and activities in participating Title 4 programs and teach grant. We issued of Federal Register notice not too long ago, July 31, 2018 with the dates for those public hearing. I think we also were soliciting nominations to serve in the negotiated rulemaking sessions.Shifting topics a little bit, earlier this year, back in March I think if memory serves, Congress passed, and the president signed a consolidated appropriations act as public law as you see on your screen. And that consolidation act included some provisions that impact a number of Title 4 programs. And I want to talk about just those impacts.The four areas that were impacted that federal student aid were the maximum Pell Grant award, the use of FAFSA data which is pretty narrowly defined and restricted in the Higher Education Act, a new provision that we refer to and is referenced as the Children of Fallen Heroes Scholarship Act and then finally a temporary extension of the public service loan forgiveness provision.So as you likely know by now, the omnibus bill raised the maximum of Pell Grant by $175 from $5,920 last year in the '17/'18 award year to $6,095 for the 2018 and '19 award year. As you know, when the maximum Pell Grant increases as it did, that also expands the eligible expected family contribution of those applicants who are now eligible. And in this case the eligible EFC expanded from a maximum of $5,239 to $5,486. So we published a revised '18/'19 federal Pell Grant payment and disbursement. You can see the link there, the dear colleague letter Jan. 18, 2004. We also have issued several electronic announcement to provide operational guidance as to when COD and other systems would be able to accommodate those recent changes in the Pell Grant payment schedules.And you can see that the revised schedule also provided - let's see, just a second, sorry. We also issued an electronic announcement that in May concerning ED Express and the release 2.0. And then packaging and Pell Grant modules that calculates Pell Grants according to that revised schedule. So that pertained to the ED Express system.The higher education act is pretty specific as to what the FAFSA data can be used for and limits that to the administration of Title 4 institutional and state financial aid. The omnibus bill also provided some regulatory relief in expanding that authority a little bit to that allows institutions to FAFSA data is scholarship granting organizations designated by the FAFSA applicant. Conditional on the applicant providing explicit written consent and that the disclosure is to assist the applicant applying for and receiving financial aid at the institution.I think it's important to note a couple of things about this. That there are very - the restrictions on these scholarship organizations that they cannot use that information for other purposes. That this is at the discretion of the institution. The institutions are not required to provide this information, but they are now allowed to provide that information upon request from their applicants. And then finally that the congress did make it clear by limited this provision until the higher education act is reauthorized their intent to revisit this subject whenever they take on the reauthorization of the higher education act. So you can follow that guidance as you choose. Another provision in the omnibus bill was the Children of Fallen Heroes Scholarship Act. And this, the way they did this that the omnibus bill actually amended Section 473b of the higher education act and that’s the section in needs analysis. And what they - what it does is expands the special rule for when an expected family contribution shall be deemed by the institution to be zero. Students to be - must have been eligible, must be eligible to receive a Pell Grant for the year in which eligibility determination is made. And that beings with the 2018/'19 award year. So they had to have an expected family contribution greater than zero. Of course at zero they would have already received the maximum Pell Grant, but less than the EFC maximum cutoff for Pell Grant in order to qualify. In addition, these applicant students then had a parent or guardian who while actively serving as a public safety officer died in the line of duty in order to qualify and in those cases, institutions are instructed to treat the student EFC as zero for campus-based aid. So for federal work study and federal SALG as well as to award the student the maximum Pell Grant rather than the Pell Grant associated with their EFC.We're still in the process of issuing guidance on that. So we're working on that. We're in addition to that, we're also working on changes that'll be necessary in the COD system to allow institutions to submit disbursements to COD that will be inconsistent, if you will, with the EFC. You of course can't change the EFC. We don’t expect you to do that. You can't. But we do expect you to treat the student as having a zero EFC for campus-based and Pell Grant purposes. And so watch for further guidance on that. We've working throughout the summer on this and hope to get that out shortly. The omnibus bill also provided $350 million appropriate for the temporary expansion of the public service loan forgiveness program. Eligible direct loan borrowers who may be ineligible solely because some of or all of the payments they have made previously were to under a non-qualifying repayment plan such as extended repayment. So I would refer you for now to the electronic announcement that you see on your screen of May 23, 2018 for more information about that as we move forward.Let's shift topics a little bit to the federal Perkins Program. I hope it comes as no surprise that the federal Perkins Program is winding done. In fact it's wound down, if you will, with the 2017/'18 award year that effectively ended June 30 of this year. The federal Perkins loan program extension act which was enacted back in December of 2015, extended the program through September 30 of''17 and eliminated the grandfathering of students after that new expiration date. So schools have not been able and should not have awarded graduate students Perkins loan money after September 30 of 2016. And likewise made any subsequent disbursements to graduate students awarded before that date after June 30 of 2017. Likely for undergraduates, Perkins loan should not have been awarded to undergraduates after September 30 of last year. But you were permitted to make any subsequent disbursements to those undergraduates up until and including June 30 of this year. So the advance of Perkins loan money should have now effectively ended. And that coincides, of course, the June 30 date with encapsulating your Perkins loan advances for this year all on the FIS app that you will be submitting later this fall. So we published dear colleague letter Jan 17, '10 and advised that we are going to begin collecting the federal share of schools revolving funds after you submit the 2019/'20 FIS app that will be due, I think it's on October 1 of 2018. Schools are not required to liquidate their Perkins loan portfolio. So if you wish to continue to service your outstanding Perkins loans of if you have third party servicer servicing those loans for you, you may continue to do that. However, if a school does choose to liquidate, we ask that you submit your intent to liquidate through the campus-based system of COD.The higher education act has a statutory re-equipment Section 466 that requires the distribution of assets for Perkins loans and similar to the - for some schools you may be familiar with excess liquid capital process that we began to implement actively about three or four years ago. The distribution of assets process will be very similar and will - the deadlines will be provided later this year. But suffice to say, that once you've submitted your FIS app after October 1, we will take into consideration both contributions and repayments of funds from the federal government and from your institution over time. We have a formula that is careful to evaluate the federal capital contribution share of the funds that you have on hand and we will be asking you to remit those funds back to the federal government as well as to remove from your Perkins loan revolving fund the institutional share of those revolving funds. So you'll be notified as to what those amounts are sometime later this year after the submission of the FIS app.One thing to point out, schools have asked us several times whether they may reimburse themselves from revolving fund cash for cancellations. And our answer is no. Institutions, higher education act strictly prohibits the use of funds, excuse me, prohibited - appropriated for FCC for being used for cancellation reimbursements. And in fact, the congress has to specifically appropriate funds for reimbursing institutions for cancellations, and to date, they have not done so. The - so you can see the notation there on the consolidated appropriations act did not allocate funds for Perkins loan cancellation reimbursement. Shifting topics to gainful employment, the disclosures were updated. Updated disclosures were due April 6 of this - earlier this spring. The GE exposure template is there on your screen as well as quick start guides and the help desk number there. And direct distribution requirements then were delayed until July 1, 2019. We have - there's a notice - notices of intent to appeal were due last October and documentation was due to those appeals February The Department is still in the process of adjudicating those appeals and they well be posted on the FSA data center. Excuse me.So completer list for the next calculation of GE rates were released in April of 2018. And corrections had to have been submitted by June 13. And the department is reviewing those corrections as we speak. Next steps in the process will be continuing to process to calculate debt - draft debt to earnings rates. So it's really important the data accuracy that you supply to the department services important purposes. So it's really important. We want to emphasize the importance of submitting accurate and timely data to COD, to the NSLDS system and on your FIS app. All of those reporting requirements have direct impacts on the students that you serve as well as on your offices. So we want to encourage you to make that an important part of what you do. We know you do.A few operational reminders, we're very excited about My Student Aid mobile app. We promised earlier this spring it would be available this summer and it is. And we have made the application available in both the Apple store as well as Google Play. Is that what it's called? So you can download that now. In fact I just went over - I went out there yesterday in fact and just on my own smart phone to see if I can find it. It is available. I would encourage you if you're curious or if you advised your students. As we know this generation of young people. It's all mobile all the time and so are we. So we encourage you to take a look at that. It's pretty cool, and we're excited about it.This is, kind of, we call it a, kind of, a soft rollout of the '18/'19 FAFSA on a smart phone or tablet. We also plan to make the '19/'20 FAFSA mobile available at startup on October 1 of this year. So there you have it.Year 'round Pell, so this again, I hope is not new news. But we do have a provision. The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2017 -- whoops, excuse me -- had provisions for students to receive Pell Grants up to 150 of their scheduled award. That was effective beginning with the 2017/'18 award year. And - but it applied to last summer only if the student - if the school choose to treat a summer term for example as a header for the 2017/'18 award year. So for many schools, this summer may have been the first real opportunity for you to make decisions concerning the treatment of year 'round Pell. You can see the dear colleague letter there on the screen in front of you.A student must be otherwise eligible to receive a Pell Grant. A student has to be enrolled at least half time in the payment. In other words, unlike Pell Grant, there is a general provision of course where a student less than half time can receive a Pell Grant. But that exception does not apply to year 'round Pell. So in order to get anything above that 100% of the scheduled awards for a year, the student has to be enrolled at least half time in that particular term. And of course the additional Pell Grants are included as part of the student 600% maximum Pell eligibility - lifetime eligibility used.So a payment period can include awards from both the initial Pell Grant scheduled award as well as from the additional Pell Grant award. You can actually use up the first part of the first 100% of the award before moving into the additional 50% of scheduled awards, if you choose. The calculated award for payment period is greater than the remaining balance. In those instances, where you have a student that's enrolled half time or more in the summer. And the amount of Pell Grant that you wish to pay them up to 50% of the scheduled award exceeds what's left in their first 100%, you then fill out the 100% and then move to the additional 50% to get the student their allocation for the summer.Remember too that summer terms, we've always described, I know schools popularly refer to headers and trailers. Although you won't find those words, I don't think, in any of our formal regulations or statutes. We refer to crossover periods. And remember a crossover period is any enrollment period that crosses over the period of June 30 and July 1. Institutions have long had the authority to make an institutional decision as to which award year a crossover period applies to. And we would remind you that with the year 'round Pell, that you may make that determination of a crossover period applying to either, in this case, the 2017/18 or the 2018/'19 award year on an individual student by student basis. It doesn't have to just be consistent for the entire institution. Because of the maximum Pell Grant increase, of course for 2018/'19, it would seem that all other things being equal including EFC, that a school would want to take a long, hard look at defining the crossover period to the 2018/'19 award year if you're intent is to try to get your student the maximum of Pell Grant to which they're entitled.So when the - of course this slide is just telling you that you report to COD as one amount. You don't need to worry about ascribing parts of a Pell Grant for a crossover period to the first 100% or the second 50%, if you will of the scheduled award. We'll take care of that for you. So let's shift topics a minute to verification. For 2018/'19, the verification data items are the same as they have been for the last couple of years. Same verification tracking groups that were a handful, very few changes for 2018/'19, but I want to highlight those for you now.So as you know the internal revenue service data retrieval tool which we lost for the last little bit of '16/'17 as well as a good part of the '17/'18 award year is back and was available at startup for the '18/'19 award year, FAFSA year. We did make a change that dependent students who report via nontax filers, no longer have to provide confirmation of non-filing from the IRS or other relevant tax authority. And we also clarified for '18/'19 that applicants selected for V4 or V5 which as you know is the identity verification component, must submit an unexpired valid government issued photo ID as part of the condition of satisfying the V4, V5 verification requirement. One of the consequences of bringing back the IRS data retrieval tool for '18/'19 as you know is that we had to enhance the security and privacy of that information both online and in the way, it was transferred between the IRS and the FAFSA application. The - and so the information is amassed and encrypted so that it is not available to the user either on the IRS DRT website, the FAFSA website or on the student aid report that the FAFSA applicant receives. Before sharing the data with the applicant, we really want to stress institutions must be sure that the person to whom they are sharing information is indeed the applicant and the person that's entitled to have that information. And otherwise all we - all you would have done is moved the security concerns from the online sessions to the financial aid office and we don't want that. And you don't either.Of course, institutions in the state aid agencies will continue to receive and have access to that sensitive information from the IRS. But applicants and parents are not able to make corrections to IRS data retrieval tool transferred items before or after submission because the information is amassed to them. So institutions will continue to be able and need to make any necessary corrections. The good news is we hope other than in areas of professional judgement, or changes in family circumstances that the information should be correct and so the need to change the data should be significantly less.Per your request, schools had asked if we would identify any flags for any data elements that were changed both separate flags for students and parents and then flags for each field that is transferred from the IRS. This was intended to make it easier for you to see as a school if the information was transferred without change and if something was changed, what was changed? And we outlined all of this in an electronic announcement of August 7, 2017. One of the other things that was implemented with the return of the IRS data retrieval tool is that when an applicant and tax filer successfully uses the IRS data retrieval tool to obtain their IRS data and transfer that information back to the FAFSA that the tax filer is notified that that information was used. And so that is done via the mail and a letter is sent to the tax filers address of record with the IRS. And basically it says, and some of you, I’m sure, have seen these letters. Basically it's intended to say hey, if this wasn't you, that did this, you know, somebody - you transferred your tax data to the FAFSA. If this wasn't you, contact us, the IRS, and it gives a phone number and how to do that.This is not unlike some of the same kinds of things, the messages I get when I log into my email account and I get a - from a remote or unknown computer and I get a message saying hey, was this you logging in? And of course it was, but so this just one more safety precaution to make sure that the sensitive data remains secure.And of course, the IRS get transcript online is again available. We're aware that the security threshold for using the get transcript online is quite high. So we also are aware that applicants may find it easier to use the get transcript online by mail requests rather than the trying to navigate the high bar that the IRS has for the security clearance for getting the transcript online. But that said, families are welcome and should try to use that. And if they are successful, it does save some time.Of course, the one item that families may have a reason to want to change even with the use of the IRS DRT is in the rollover of IRAs, IRA or untaxed pensions, distribution field. And in those cases, where the - we basically ask a question when there is an IRA, or an untaxed pension reported, excuse me, we ask the applicant to report if any portion of their untaxed pension or IRA is - was a rollover. And then they're invited to indicate how much the dollar amount. And then we do the math to figure out how much of the reported untaxed pension or IRA distribution is still included on the FAFSA and to the ISA record that you as a school received. We also thought indicate the IRS data field flag has changed to a 2 to indicate that the user did make a change to an IRS data field prior to submission. In fact, in this environment today, it's the only IRS DRT field that the applicant can change. So in those instances, where they do have an IRA or an untaxed pension rollover to complete the verification, we do require that the applicant sign a statement certifying that the untaxed pension or IRA distribution contained a rollover. And we've - I think we've explained that before.We also added amended tax returns. So in the past, aid offices would only learn about applicants that had amended tax returns somewhat by accident. Beginning this year when the student or family uses the IRS data retrieval tool, and has an amended tax return on file, excuse me, the IRS returns a request flag value of 07. But it also returns the value of their un-amended or original tax return. So we've issued guidance to explain that while you can't use the IRS data retrieval tool income detail, that you are aware of the amended tax return and that you need to obtain either an IRS tax return transcript or IRS data retrieval information on a - or from another source. So you have to have a 1040X or a tax return in additional to the tax return transcript in order to validate and verify what the actual correct income information is. There are instances where families amend tax returns where they don't change any of the income fields in which case, that income fields and the EFC, quite honestly, could be correct. But you don't know that without collecting the 1040X and the tax transcript. This is just a reminder, the verification, identify verification reporting requirement, we are - we just want to remind you to continue to update regulatory in the FAA access to CPS online the results of identifying - the results of resolving identify in high school completion statues. Excuse me, but only for those applicants that we identify as V4 or V5. Please do not report or update statuses for any of the applicants that your institution chooses to select for identity or high school completion status verification. Only those that we have identified as V4, V5 on the ISA records.So this reporting requirement will continue to be in place both for the '17/'18 year that just recently concluded as well as for the 2018/'19 processing year. And we just encouraged you not to wait until the year concludes before a reporting those statuses. It just is not a - it becomes quite burdensome if you do that. If you just keep up with it on a regular basis, it - we hope it will not be that much of an extra effort.That's really important information for us as we continue to evaluate the effectiveness of these V4, V5 statuses and so we really need to know - we need good data and good information from you as to how effective these statues are in validating, verifying that people are who they say they are and that they have a recognized high school credential.So here on the slide, I'm going to (Miesha) read each of these out loud to you in their entirety. So stand by. No, I'm kidding. But here's a reference 2018/'19 verification resources that you can refer to after our call today. Hopefully you'll find that helpful to have them all in one place.And I know it's hard for me to believe, but for those of you who like to work ahead, we've published already the Federal Register notice and the verification requirements for 2019/2020. And despite the fact that your phones are on mute, I heard the collective groan as you prepare to open school for fall of 2018. I’m sure the last thing on your mind is verification requirements for '19/'20. However, that said, the good news is there are no changes to the FAFSA items that we're going to require you to verify. The verification tracking groups remain unchanged. What constitutes acceptable documentation and departmental verification selection. So all of those things remain unchanged going into the 2019/2020 award year.And the electronica announcement, we've already issued June 8 with the verification suggested text as well for 2019/'20. Excuse me. And we expect this may be out. I didn't check to see if the '19/'20 ISA record layout including the verification tracking flag values is out there now that we're expecting to have it out there now in July. I'm not sure if we made that or not. If it's not out there now, it will be shortly.After August 30 of 2018, the department is no longer going to print or deliver federal student aid publications with the exception of the FAFSA and while the FAFSA will not be available in bulk form, there is still the provision for applicants who wish to obtain a paper printed copy of the FAFSA to obtain that. But we do want you to review your current inventory. If you need, order any publications from the financial aid toolkit at the address that you see on your screen. Of course, publications will always be available electronically from those sites there that you see. And so you can - you're welcome to go to those sources and print them as need be. I want to shift topics a little bit electronic G45 process. So this is probably not something that many of you have experience with. So I'll try to give you a brief summary. When an eligible noncitizen completes the FAFSA and provides an alien registration number on the that FAFSA, we do a series of computer matches with Department of Homeland Security to ascertain that individual status is one that the FAA can then use to determine if the person is eligible to receive Title 4 benefits. In a very limited number of instances, those - that verification match process, what we call a primary and secondary or first and second levels of verification does not return an expected result. In which case the institution in the past used to be instructed to obtain from the applicant the document - the student's documentation of their status in the United States and submit that with a Form G845 to the DHS. DHS about a year ago, a little over a year ago now informed us they were switching over, eliminating the paper verification, third step verification process and effective May 1. So we advised schools to stop mailing forms G945 and we began the process of switching schools, giving schools access to the Department of Homeland Securities save system. And the instructions on how to access the save system and links to those resources are available on a DHS save information page on IFAB and also an electronic announcement the first of which we issued February 26.And then followed up by a June 8 announcement in which we informed the community that DHS had an issue with the save system in which a fairly large number of you reported that you were not able to access records for individuals even those that had been previously confirmed as eligible non-citizens. So thank you for helping us identify that problem. We heard from a number of you very quickly and have been working throughout the summer with DHS to resolve the issues. We think we have most of that identified and resolved and we issued an electronic announcement on just on August 13 telling you that that the save system is again available for you to submit third step verification requests.Let's see. I want to go back. However, whoops, we also mentioned identify in that August 13 EA that there is still a very small number of instances where you could get a no records found error message and we are aware DHS is aware of some additional coding issues, very effective, very small number of applicants. However, we appreciate how frustrating that is when you can't assist the student the way you would like. So the electronic announcement guidance that we issued just this week spells out that in those instances they are a few steps that you can take to, kind of, resubmit the applicant to the first and secondary match. And then into the save system. But if you continue to receive the no records found error message just - we ask that you just sit on those for a few days. DHS is working on it. In fact, they're - I got an update this morning. We again, think that this problem is going to be resolved in the next few days. So we don't expect this to be an ongoing problem and we appreciate your patience with DHS as the work through these transitional issues.Shifting topics, the 2019/'20 need analysis as required in the higher education act, we published - were required to publish the need analysis tables for the new award year by June 1 each year. We did publish those on May 17. And then again, a correction in the educational savings and asset protection allowance tables, there was one line of that table that was missing as a result of the type setting that was done by the federal register. They have republished that to add in that additional missing line. But so that - the only correction if you will was one row of the asset protection allowance table missing. And that's been corrected. One thing I want to mention as we wind up here, experimental sites initiative, the higher education act gives the department the authority to operate some experimental sites to test a variety of ideas that could lead to advising policy makers on changes to regulatory statutory requirements in the Title 4 programs. We are running a number of experiments currently. You can see them listed here most of those experiments are closed and we are not accepting any additional participating schools. However, I did want you to be aware that those experiments are ongoing. And that we are collecting information and data form participating institutions. And expect to be issuing, analyzing that data this fall and issuing reports on each of those experiments early next year. So for those of you that are curious about any of those topics. Watch for that. And with that, I'm going to take what's left of my voice and turn it over to (Miesha Challenger) to finish out. Thank you.(Miesha Challenger):Thank you, (Craig). That was a lot of information that I know you all took in. But again, I know it's very relevant and important as we proceed into this new year as it relates to the different policy programs whether it be Pell and verification in our new FAFSA mobile app. So I see a lot of questions are coming in now. So again, continue to ask questions. And then at the end, once I've briefly talked about some resources for counselors and mentors, we will address some of your questions.So I just wanted to share very briefly some resources, some online resources that we have that can help you with your respective audiences. So very quickly, some of you may or may not be familiar. But I'm hoping you all know about the financial aid toolkit page that federal student aid provides. It's financialaidtoolkit.. That is the website that you can go to. And there on that that website, we provide federal student aid information and outreach tools for counselors, college access professionals, advisors, nonprofit mentors, individuals like you all.So I really would encourage you all to go on that website if you haven't already. There's a lot of great information on there. We talk about how - we talk about learning about financial aid. How to conduct outreach if you're curious about doing that or you're not sure you need tools to do that. Get training, we're going to talk a little bit about. And then we have a wonderful search engine to search for financial aid tools and resources. So a lot of this is on the financialaidtoolkit.. A lot of times, whether we talk about the release or the launches of mobile app, we have announcement link that is updated to let you know when any new policy is arriving, so you can absolutely come to this page. Click on the announcements and see what's current.I want to talk a little bit about one of the tabs that we provided as we talked about conducting outreach. A lot of you are in the field or working schools and want to figure out how you can reach your target audience, maybe at a different level or maybe you're new to this process. We have a lot of wonderful tools here. If you click on conduct outreach, we talk about we give you a tool to host an event. We have PSAs. We also have digital outreach resources. We have a - we have Facebook posts. We have tweets and we have videos that you can use whether it's talking about how to fill out the FAFSA form or creating an FSA ID.As you see here, I've provided you with a screenshot about how to make a presentation. We have various different presentations that discuss financial literacy, filling out the FAFSA form and also finding money for college. Also on our conduct outreach page, we have an FSA spotlight for our partners and we highlight a lot of various organizations and the work that they are doing. So we like to showcase our partners so that people can see what is going on and actually share out best practices and challenges and which I think can be appreciated and also be learning practices and tactics for this new year.The email to subscribe or find out more information about FSA partners, the email address is FSA partners -- partners plural -- so F-S-A-P-A-R-T-N-E R-S at ed dot gov so it's FSA partners --plural-- at ed dot gov if you want information about our FSA partner spotlight.So under out get training page, I've provided you all with a screenshot which also shows you the webinar that we had today. So we hold several different webinars at FSA and in order to find out where the webinars or when they will take place, you would go to our get training page. (Craig) has done an amazing job sharing out a lot of different policies today. And we will have in the future starting in the month of September, October and November, some additional webinars that will talk about our new mobile app, verification, various different topics that are important to the financial aid process. So in order to find out about our next set of webinars and as I've mentioned, we are actually doing, some webinars in early September, you would to this page. Click on the event and register. There also are some prerecorded trainings that take place as it relates to (unintelligible) information so financial aid administrators. If you click on the link at the bottom, that will take you to some prerecorded training specifically for financial aid administrators. And then we also archive our webinar. So I know a lot of people may not have been able to partake in the webinar today or participate, but we will also house this webinar on the financial aid toolkit. If you go to the search engine which I'm about to show you and click under - click on the webinar tab, you will be able to find today's webinar.So it's really important. I know there's a lot of information on this page, but important to know where to go to find our webinar postings for upcoming webinars which provide a lot great information for you all.So this is really the - a really great functionality of the toolkit as it relates to searching for various documents. So the way that the search engine works, you've got three tabs. What you're looking for, the resource type. What the audience type would be and then the topic. So as you can see for the resource type, we talk - we provide presentations, social media content, video, presentations, web resources and tools. So you would click on however many of those particular resource types you would like and then audience type. We provide information for high school students, adult students, current college students, high school counselors, military families just to name a few categories. And the topics, we have a variety of different topics. We talk about the FAFSA, FSA ID, loan repayment which is always a buzz topic, financial literacy, and the various types of financial aid. So all you would do is click on the various topics that are of interest to you. Hit get resources and we will - it will list all the different pertinent materials that you can use. Again, to find the recorded version of this particular webinar today, you would to resource type which was webinars and then you just click get resources and it'll popup there.So we've shared a lot of wonderful information with you all today. We've got about five minutes left so what I would like to do is share out some of the questions that you all have been typing in as we've been providing to you all this presentation. So (Craig) do you have some questions that maybe you want to share out?(Craig Munier):Just the one in particular, I think I answered privately. But I'll answer for the group. Somebody asked for '18/'19 for dependent students that report that they did not and will not be filing a tax return, that that - the dependent student does not need to obtain a verification of non-filing from the IRS. The dependent student who is not going to file a tax return, does not need IRS verification of non-filing. That questioner was correct.Are this all? Look to me like we'd answered. (Miesha Challenger):Are there some takeaways or some things that maybe you wanted to share that you thought about after I was talking about the toolkit that maybe you neglected to mention that will be important. We've got a lot of questions about the mobile app. And the specifically I think some people are questioning whether or not we can use the IRS DRT tool or capability will be available.(Craig Munier):Right, I think that's a good question. Thank you (Miesha). This 2018/'19 soft rollout was just to establish a mobile application and, kind of, a soft rollout of the product. We intend for the 2019/'20 mobile version to be more robust and fully implementable, similar to FAFSA on the web. So yes, this is just a soft rollout to demonstrate the capabilities of the mobile FAFSA.(Miesha Challenger):And are there any other topics or points that you neglected to mention or that you want to, kind of, share out based on all the information that you provided just now?(Craig Munier):No. Well one thing I would mention that I neglected to mention with the Children of Fallen Heroes Act in particular, you know, fortunately, thank goodness and I hope this always continues to be the case. The number of those qualifying students we hope will be forever a very small population because of the terrible nature of how you qualify for that benefit. But this first year if you do have the rare student who does qualify under the Children of Fallen Heroes, we ask that - I hope that institutions will go to extraordinary lengths to advance the increased Pell Grant amount to the students while we work to modify the COD system to accommodate reimbursement of those disbursements to you the school. We think that'll be in place by December. We hope that you will do whatever you possibly can within the means of your institution to minimize the disruption to the students as they start school this fall. I know that's a lot to ask. I also know the nature of the people that do this work. And I know you'll do all you can to help those young. So we have another question. Finally, when will the Department of Education be publishing completing the FAFSA for the 2019/'20? And I think the answer to that is the online completing the FAFSA form publication is going to be available in early October and you can find the latest FAFSA news and documents at the financialaidtoolkit. under updates. (Miesha Challenger):I see that we're coming down to the end of our webinar. I know there were lots of questions that you all had. But we are really hoping that some of this information will provide very useful to you all. I also ask that you all be patient. I know you have a lot of question about some pending things as it relates to the FAFSA mobile app, but we're excited about where we are now. And how we're able to provide the FAFSA in a different way to our target audience. And we're hoping that this increase FAFSA completion which is very important.So with that being said, I want to thank you all for joining us today. And (Craig) always a pleasure to have you and sharing all this information to our audience. And we wish you all the best of luck in working with students and families to increase awareness about financial aid and the FAFSA. Thank you all so much for joining us today. Have a great day.Coordinator:Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at this time.END ................
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