The SLD released wave 13 of E-Rate funding commitments today. Again, we're not in it. This was not a surprise, really. I talked with our E-Rate consultant last night and she read to me part of a communiqué sent out by SLD to E-Rate service providers. It said that for applicants with pending funding requests looking to know the disposition of their requests before the Year 8 application window closes (on the 18th), wave 13 would likely be a disappointment in that it would be a small wave (~400 funding commitments) of only small items. In this, at least, SLD was true to their word. Only two towns in Connecticut got funding in wave 13 -- my home town of Glastonbury, and Wallingford. Glastonboring got 52K for phone service and Wallyworld got 72K for Internet and phone service.

This means that we are following "Plan A": filing redundant applications for everything that we asked for last year, plus a few new school construction-related applications. So far I have seven of the fifteen applications that are in my bailiwick packed up and sent of to the consultants.

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In better news, we received a letter from the State Department of Education (SDE) describing the status of their infrastructure grants:

As of Monday, January 31, 2005, the scoring was completed for RFP 155; the State of CT Infrastructure Wiring Grant. One hundred and nine proposals requesting more than $9,400,000 were submitted representing over one hundred and thirty districts. Seventy-one proposals have been awarded funding. Letters notifying districts of their status will be processed as expeditiously as possible.
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SDE appreciates your district taking the time to submit a proposal. The readers suggested that most of the proposals warranted funding. Unfortunately, with only $4.2M appropriated, this could not be the case. We are hopeful, now armed with the evidence that there is a need for additional funding, that the legislature will grant additional infrastructure bonds funds over the next few years.

Blessed be, Hartford is in fact on the list of seventy three towns at the bottom of the letter. We haven't seen the money yet, but we can hear it coming! It's not $6,500,000 from the Feds, but $117,000 to do some desperately needed work is a huge boost to my morale.