TEA has posted several pieces of correspondence in recent days that you may want to review.
- Prekindergarten and National School Lunch Program Guidance for 2018-2019. TEA has announced that the Texas Department of Agriculture received a waiver to allow all students enrolled in a state-funded prekindergarten program to be eligible for free meals. According to the TEA letter,
“free meals will be available to otherwise non-eligible prekindergarten students enrolled in a public prekindergarten program (whether locally-funded or tuition-based), three-to-five-year-old students receiving Preschool Program for Children with Disabilities (PPCD) services, and three-to-five-year-old students enrolled but not in membership.”
Note that since compensatory education funding is based on the count of students participating in the National School Lunch program for the prior year, this decision may also help provide a small boost to some districts’ FSP funding. You can read the correspondence here.
- Prekindergarten Eligibility. TEA provided this correspondence to let districts know that a change in the national school lunch program will now allow age-eligible students who receive Medicaid Free or Medicaid Reduced benefits to be eligible for prekindergarten by means of the same qualifier as students receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Disaster Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families services. You can read this correspondence here.
- Federal Time and Effort Reporting. TEA has posted correspondence reminding districts of the option to use the substitute system of federal time and effort reporting for employees who work on more than one federal grant award, work on a set schedule, and work on only one activity at a time. The correspondence is here. More information about the substitute system is here.
- TRS On-Behalf. .The division of financial compliance sent out a list-serve notice letting districts know that they are supposed to report increased contributions to TRS made by the legislature during the last special session as increased TRS on-behalf payments. The content of the list-serve is pasted below as well as a link to a spreadsheet with the amounts to be reported for each district.
TRS Care payment: Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB) Statement No. 85 as it applies to GASB Statement No. 24
House Bill 21, Section 10, 85th Texas Legislature, First Called Special Session, 2017, directs the transfer of $212 million from the Health and Human Services Commission to the Teacher Retirement system of Texas (TRS) to address certain costs for the Texas Public School Employees Group Insurance Program (commonly known as TRS-Care). GASB Statement No. 85 requires that on-behalf payments are recorded for districts’ proportionate share. TRS received payments from January 1–August 31, 2018.
Districts will record the expense for their proportionate share of the funds under object code 6144 and the corresponding revenue under object code 5831. Districts with a June 30 fiscal year-end will need to accrue two months (July and August) of on-behalf payments. See the attached spreadsheet for district proportionate share amounts. This spreadsheet will also be posted on the Financial Accountability System Resource Guide (FASRG) web page. For assistance in recording the additional on-behalf please see page 110 of Module 1, Financial Accounting and Reporting of the FASRG.
This does not apply to nongovernmental charter schools.
Financial Compliance Division