My own petard

I've been complaining along with the rest of the E-Rate community about the timing of audits. Why did they have to come right at the busiest time of the year? Why not have them start in March or April?

Now I'm getting my "be careful what you wish for" comeuppance: two notifications in the last week or so of upcoming audits. Actually, it is much better than getting all the requests at once, but I'm still trying to close up one of the earlier audits, so it feels like piling on.

I did a quick check, and looks like 100% of my clients with disbursements of over $500,000 in 2007-2008 got audited. It's not a big group, so maybe I'm just unlucky.

2-in-5 is 0-5

I'm a little late in commenting on this, since I'm facing a flurry of audits.

USAC released its demand estimate for 2009-2010, and once again, the "2-in-5 Rule" (which says that applicants can only purchase Internal Connections twice in a 5-year period) has failed. The stated purpose of the rule was to decrease demand, but it just doesn't work.

This year the Internal Connections demand among 90% schools is down significantly from last year, but still above 2007 levels. There was a big bump in demand in 2008, and now we have returned to the steady increase in demand which we've seen since the 2-in-5 Rule took effect.

I'm thinking that this year's denial threshold will be low (60%?) because USAC has a big pile of money sitting around ready to be rolled over, but I give the 2-in-5 Rule no credit for that.

I've said it before and I'll say it again (and again and again): the 2-in-5 Rule must go.