EANS Final Approval Methodology

Prioritizing schools who enroll low-income students and who were affected by COVID-19

On March 1, 2021, applications opened for the South Carolina Emergency Assistance to Non-Public Schools (SCEANS) program. The application window closed on March 31, 2021. Applications were reviewed for eligibility and to ensure all requests were allowable, reasonable, and necessary. Conditional approvals were provided to schools for all permissible requests for services and assistance. The total amount of funds conditionally approved exceeded the amount of EANS funds available to South Carolina. The following summarizes the review process and methodology used in determining final approvals.

• Initial review of applications indicated a total amount of $41,301,722.49 in potentially allowable requests for 111 different non-public schools (NPS) throughout the state.
• The total EANS award granted to the South Carolina Department of Education (SCDE) amounts to $39,981,327, with $200,000 being reserved for administrative costs and an estimate of approximately $900,000 being reserved for payment processing fees charged by the payment service provider. This required the SCDE to amend conditional approvals initially provided to NPSs to reduce the amount of services or assistance provided under SCEANS to fall within the available award amount.
• Priority must be given to NPSs that enroll low-income students and are most impacted by COVID-19.
• All applicant schools provided a narrative demonstrating a level of COVID impact related to items such as loss of tuition revenue, decrease in enrollment, a lack of capacity to provide remote learning due to insufficient technological support, and learning loss attributable to educational disruptions caused by the COVID pandemic.
• The following methodology has been utilized to reduce the total amount of requested services and/or assistance to fall within the available SCEANS award amount, while prioritizing schools that enroll low-income students and were most impacted by the pandemic.
  • The allowable requests for services and/or assistance (both reimbursements and future costs) for each NPS were totaled.
  • This total for each NPS was then divided by the number or estimated number of students from low-income families during the 2019–20 school year, as provided on the application.
  • Outliers (schools who exceeded the upper bound of the PLIP amount) were identified, and the maximum total service or assistance for an individual NPS was set at $16,613 per low-income pupil. Total amounts of conditionally approved services/assistance were reduced for these outliers to fall within the bounds.
  • Schools reporting no low-income students were allowed up to $10,000 for allowable services and assistance, as they had been negatively impacted by the pandemic.
• After the above adjustments were made, the approved services and assistance came to a total of $38,878,315.52 in services and assistance. Accounting for the administrative fee and estimated payment processing fees, the total comes to $39,981,191.97, falling within the SCEANS available amount.
• Affected schools were notified and revised requests were provided by the NPSs for their amended approvals.