[Oasfaa] OTAG Eligibility Status Reports

[Joyner, Shiela]

Good Morning,

We are working with several schools to finalize their schedules for receipt
of OTAG Eligibility Status Reports.  These schedules were included in a
March 14, 2001, mailing to all school OTAG representatives. If we don't
already have your schedule, Shipra Sinha will be contacting you.
Surprisingly to us, we're finding that a large number of schools (and some
rather large schools) are choosing to schedule processing of their FIRST
report as late as August, in some cases September and October.  Folks, we
believe that's too late!  That late in the year, we are expecting the
majority of our funds to already be committed and that our work with
application updates will by that time be primarily "clean up" work.

Please remember that the Eligibility Status Report leads to the awards
process.  If a majority of schools wait until August or later to receive
their first Eligibility Status Report, this will result in a delay in the
awarding process until after the fall semester has already begun.  Work to
get awards processed that the OTAG office was expecting to do over the
summer will be "piled up" to be done at the same time we are expecting (and
some schools will be expecting us to) to be focused on the disbursement
process.  We would anticipate that, under such a scenario and with our
present staffing situation, the quality of our service to students and
schools will be affected.  And any hope we have of providing timely
information regarding the awarding cutoff will be significantly affected.

We're interested in hearing from schools regarding their wishes.  Are we
misunderstanding?  Are schools misunderstanding?  Or is it actually now
desirable that the OTAG awarding process in large part be delayed until
AFTER school starts in the fall?   Please provide feedback directly to me.
We will compile the results, and assess our work plan accordingly.  Thanks
for your time and your input.

***********************
Shiela Joyner, Director
Oklahoma Tuition Aid Grant Program
P. O.  Box 3020
Oklahoma City, OK 73101-3020
Internet:  sjoyner at otag.org
Voice: (405) 234-4356    Toll Free (877) 662-6231
Fax: (405) 234-4392