Family income levels for NSLP eligibility are set each year by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The guidelines, based on family size and annual income, can be found at NSLP Guidelines.

The two most important points to remember regarding E-rate discount levels are as follows:

(1) In some cases, finding only a few more eligible students can significantly improve a school's discount rate. As a dramatic example, consider an urban school with a total of 500 students. If 247 students - or 49.4% - are eligible, the school would have a discount rate of 60%. With one more eligible student - bringing the eligibility percentage to 49.6%, which rounds to 50% - the school's discount would increase to 80%. Not only does this mean a one-third increase in the discount rate, but often may make the difference between an 80% discount on Internal Connections requests and no discount at all. (The Priority Two funding threshold for FY 2003 was 70%.)

(2) E-rate discounts are based on the number of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches, not on the actual number of students participating in the NSLP program. Although the percentage of participating students is the easiest way to establish an E-rate discount - and is the number that the SLD will accept without additional documentation - it often significantly understates a school's true eligibility percentage (particularly at the junior or senior high school level).

There are several techniques that can be used to find and document additional eligible students. Here, in order of the amount of work required, are a few:

(1) Many schools will know or suspect that certain families have incomes below the NSLP guidelines, perhaps based on the previous year's participation. If they are tracking application returns, the schools can tactfully encourage those families to apply. This is a critical time in the year to track and encourage applications for eligible students.

(2) Although discount rates are established on a school-by-school basis, districts with separate primary and secondary schools may find it advantageous to collect NSLP applications centrally and to search (so-called "sibling searches") for families enrolling only their younger children in the lunch programs. Those same family applications can be used to document the eligibility of older, non-participating, students.

(3) Alternative measures are approved for documenting income eligibility for E-rate purposes (see NSLP Alternatives). As indicated, these include student participation in other school food programs (breakfast or snack), eligibility for other Federal assistance programs, or school-wide surveys. For an example of a survey letter and form, see Survey.

Reminder: The discount rate for libraries is based on the eligibility percentages of the schools in the district in which they are located. School districts able to document higher levels of eligibility than are reflected in publicly available NSLP data are encouraged to provide this information to their local libraries.

Applicants interested in attending a state workshop should check their state's E rate Web site or contact their state's E-rate coordinator(s). Links to state E-rate Web sites and coordinators are available at State Information.

This year, for the first time, the SLD is providing Web-based access for registered service providers and consultants to its two and a half day "Train-the-Trainer" workshop. Registration must be made via the SLD Web site beginning at 3:00 p.m., Monday, September 13. Because of limited system capability, participation will be limited to the first 98 registrants.

The SLD has also indicated plans for a separate training workshop for vendors and for a few country-wide vendor and applicant workshops (the latter focusing on bidding and invoicing issues) later in October and November. When dates for these workshops are finalized, the information should be available on the SLD Web site.