Corey Khan: Um this, oh, thank you. I’ll say it again. So, welcome everyone today is the California Department of Education’s California State Preschool Program Fiscal Training.
This is a training that we did, three in person trainings over the course of a month and a half. And then this is the webinar version that we are conducting for those that may have not been able to make it to the in-person trainings.
So, one thing that I do want to note is that we are recording, as you probably heard. The hope is that we are going to try to post this. There is a lot of accessibility things that we will have to follow. And then so we don't know when this will be posted. But that's the hope so that's why we are recording. We are going to have right now. The chat has been disabled, I believe, for all the participants. The Q&A function is available for those that want to submit a question. So please use the Q&A box for any questions. And then, after each presentation we will have a question-and-answer session. And then we will be able to unmute participants and ask the question aloud, so feel free to use the chat box or wait and ask the question aloud.
So, I want to go over some training logistics that I did go over a little bit, but essentially this is our webinar version of the in-person trainings that we did a couple months ago. Those in person trainings were two days, two full days. This webinar will be three half days. So, it is expected today to go until about noon, I believe tomorrow, until from nine to noon, and then the last day, I believe, might be nine to one. So that's sort of what we're looking at in terms of training logistics. Each day I will go over the agenda for that day. So, everyone has a chance to figure out what we will be talking about.
So, some of our goals for this training is for everyone to understand how to earn your contract. Not just within what we have been calling a hold harmless year. Where typically, uh California State Preschool program, which we often refer to as CSPP contracts. Typically, you have to earn your contract by providing services to children. Since I believe 2020, these contracts have been under what we call hold harmless. So, your reimbursement is based on not necessarily enrollment of children. But we, what we do is we look at your costs so we will reimburse contractors based on their costs, but not to exceed their contract amount. So that's very different than under what we call a non-hold harmless year. So, some of our goals are that we want you to understand at the end of this training what that really means. So, what does it mean under a non-hold harmless year? What it means under a hold harmless year? There are still fields that we collect on our report form that don't necessarily apply or feed into the reimbursement, and that would be like the enrollment and attendance reports, but we are still collecting that data and still use it. Still get questions, about enrollment so that's sort of why we want to ensure that contractors are accurately reporting.
We also know that there's a lot of turnover in the field since, you know, this sort of hold-harmless world that we've been in. So, there's a lot of staff who might not have ever experienced a non-hold harmless reimbursement year, both on the fiscal side and the program side. So anyway, those are some of our goals for the training. This is a very fiscally based training, but you will see throughout the presentation we do have representatives from our Early Education Division. We have both on the policy side and the program consultant side. So, we are able to hopefully answer a lot of your questions, even though it might not be fiscally based, but we do have representatives to answer those questions. We also have participants or panelists here from our Audits Department. And so, you know, if there's any audits questions, they will also have presentations throughout these three days. And so, hopefully between all of us, we can get all of your questions answered.
I'm going to go over the agenda, and I don't believe we have a slide on that. But essentially all of you received, I mean, since you're all logged in here. You probably received the email that had the meeting, the webinar link. But it also had the topics that we would discuss today. So, the agenda today is, we're going to start very, very high level. We're going to go over first, just very basic contract and payment processes. How do you get your contract? The different types of contracts and then also just our normal payment schedules and what that looks like. And then we're going to jump into like the rules and requirements of reporting. So why do you report certain fields and we provide you with the regulation or the ED code section or the contract term and condition section. So this is very, very high level trying to put the groundwork on the field, or, you know, lay the groundwork down so that we can then jump into tomorrow, more of the tangible things. And then that will go until about not a little shy of eleven. So around ten forty-five, hopefully, we'll go over CPARIS overview. And so CPARIS is the online system that contractors report their fiscal and enrollment data to CDE, so we'll go over that at a very high level. And then we'll end today just with a presentation from our PQI. Admin about CSPP prior written approvals and data reporting requirements.
So that's really how today will go, and I realized that I failed to, I am so bad at this, but I failed to say who I am. I think so my name is Corey Khan. I am the manager over the Early Education and Nutrition Fiscal Services unit, and we are the ones primarily having most of our, these presentations. It's very fiscally based. So, I will introduce at a very high level to everyone else who is here. We have all of our fiscal analysts who are here. They are monitoring the Q&A chat. We have all of our managers on the fiscal side so hopefully we can, like, I said, get all of your questions answered. We also have representatives from our PQI consultant area. The admins, the PQI admins are also here. So that you know programmatically, if you have any questions, you can put them in the chat hopefully. We can answer them as well and then, like, I said, we have a few audit managers in the room as well. So hopefully like, I said hopefully, at the end of today you'll sort of see how this goes. This is our first time doing a webinar of this size so hopefully it works out.
So, I will say that I do see before I turn it over to our first presentation. I do see a few hands raised. So, I'm going to call on you and then unmute you. Once I unmute you, you should be able to talk so the first one is Kathy Peebles. Go ahead and unmute yourself, I believe. And I think you can ask a question. Kathy? No? Okay, I'm going to move on. If you have a question again, you can raise your hand again. Okay, the next one it does say Abigail. So, I'm going to allow you, I'm going to unmute you as well, so go ahead and unmute yourself. We should be able to talk. Abigail? No?
Abigail: Hi! Yes, hello!
Corey Khan: Oh yes, go ahead.
Abigail: Yes, I'm sorry for the hand. It was accidentally, I didn't need to raise the hand.
Corey Khan: Okay, we'll move on. I have a few more hands that I want to get on just to see if they have any, you know, overarching questions. But otherwise, I'm going to lower your hand and you know, if you have any questions just raise your hand.
Abigail: Thank you.
Corey Khan: Yup, okay. The next person is Kayla Shin. So, I unmuted you go ahead. Kayla, I saw you unmute, I think.
Kayla Shin: Okay. So, I'm going to un-.
Corey Khan: Oh, you back you went back on mute.
Kayla Shin: Okay, I’m here.
Corey Khan: Yes.
Kayla Shin: So, do you want me to unmute or?
Corey Khan: You had your hand raised. So, did you have a question?
Kayla Shin: Oh, no, sorry it was a mistake. Sorry about that.
Corey Khan: Okay, no problem. So, for those that are seeing this actually, this is how, at the end of this presentation, we will, you know, if you have any questions, raise your hand, we'll go through the list and unmute you to ask the question aloud. There is one more person with their hand up, and all I see is CLE as their name. I don't know if this was on accident, but I unmuted you in case you had a question. So, it's someone that has the name CLE. Nope? Okay, well, I will lower your hand, and then if anyone has questions again, just raise your hand, we will take them at the end of each presentation. So, I'm going to turn it over to our first presenters. So, our first presentation is the Contract and Payment Process. Again, very high level, we're sort of laying the foundation today, and then going into more detail as the days progress. So, I will hand it over to Jennifer to do our first presentation.
Jennifer Chacon: Good morning, good morning my name is Jennifer Chacon, and I am a fiscal analyst in the Early Education and Nutrition Fiscal Services, and I will be presenting the Contract and Payment Process with my colleague, Kuiana Slaughter. Here are the topics we'll be discussing. First, I will go over original contracts and contract amendments. Next, I will go over contract budgeting, and how many full-time equivalent children you can serve. Then Kuiana will go into enrollment, attendance, and fiscal reporting requirements. Also, apportionment payments, with a breakdown of the warrant and remittance advice, and, lastly, where to find the enrollment attendance and fiscal reporting reimbursement procedures known as the Fiscal Handbook.
Let's discuss original contract and contract amendments. I will go over the contract face sheet and also contract amendments that can be initiated by the CDE or by the contractor.
This is a sample of the contract face sheet. First is the contract number in the upper right-hand corner. CSPP which stands for California State Preschool Program, 3 which indicates the fiscal year. In this example the fiscal year is 2023-24 and the last three digits represent the state preschool contract issued. If the contract is on conditional or provisional status that will be displayed just above the contract number. Underneath the contract number we have the type of program, for this example, California State Preschool Program. Next, we have the project number. The first two numbers represent the county code. The next four numbers represent the vendor code, and the last number represents the fiscal year. Then on the left side we have the legal name of the agency, for this example, it is Oz Child Care. We can then move towards the middle, and you will see the contract period of performance. July 1, 2023, through June 30, 2024, representing fiscal year 2023-24. Next, we have the maximum reimbursable amount (MRA) of 250,000, then the minimum days of operation (MDO) of 240. Towards the bottom left of the face sheet there is an encumbrance amount, or amount we are setting aside for your agency to fully earn your contract.
Contractors who submitted a timely and executed continued funding application last year, and were approved, received their contract, and did not have to sign and return. New contractors must sign and return their contract. For amendments, not all amendments require signature and will be issued via allocation letter and which we will go over later in this presentation.
Contract amendments initiated by CDE are changes that are caused by the budget act. You may know them as budget act amendments and are processed via allocation letter. When the budget act is signed, it may include changes such as cost of living adjustment, growth, reimbursement rate changes, family fee changes and adjustment factor changes.
Here's some contract changes and amendments initiated by the contractor. Changes amended via allocation are inter-agency transfers, minimum days of operation, voluntary temporary transfer, which we will go into further detail in a later presentation. Contract amendments that require a signature and will need to be returned are any change in the legal address, name, or vendor number of your agency and we recommend these should be done by July 1 in order to avoid disruption of your apportionment payment. Program narrative change, expansion funds, startup and contract relinquishment also require a signature and need to be returned.
Here's an example of a contract amendment that requires a signature. This is an amendment that adds expansion funds or start up to the contract. Just as the face sheet in the upper right-hand corner is your contract number, program type and project number. On the top left it states the amendment number, and that this amendment is for an RFA# 6 start up. It then goes on to reflect the new MRA from 250,000 to 350,000. On the bottom right is where the contractor signs the amendment then returns to the Contracts Office.
Now that we've discussed the types of contract changes and amendments, let's talk about the executed amendment process when a signature is required. For example, the contractor needs to submit a program narrative change. The contractor would send the request to their EED program consultant. Once approved by EED, they will forward it to EENFS, Early Education and Nutrition Fiscal Services. Once we receive the amendment at EENFS, we will review, approve, and forward the request to the Contracts Office for processing. Once approved by the Contracts Office, they will email the amendment to the agency. The agency is then required to sign the contract and send back to the Contracts Office. Once received, the Contracts Office will sign and send back to the agency. The amendment process is now complete, and the amendment is fully executed.
Here is an example of an allocation letter. As mentioned before, there are certain contract amendments that do not require a signature from the contractor to be fully executed. For those amendments, contractors are sent a contract allocation letter in lieu of signing and returning a contract amendment. You will notice in the top left of the letter it will show allocation letter. This allocation letter is for an MDO increase, which will then state on the lower right to change the MDO from 240 days to 246. In the bottom left, it states important signature is not required.
Next, we will go over the allocation letter process when no signature is required. The allocation letter process begins with the contractor submitting a request to their EED program consultant, in which they will review and if approved, forward it to EENFS. Or if it's for an inter-agency transfer, or VTT, the request is submitted directly to EENFS. Once we approve, we will forward it to the Contracts Office. Lastly, once processed by the Contracts Office they will send the allocation letter to the contractor via email, amendment is fully executed.
Now that we have gone over the contract face sheet, let's discuss how to budget your contract using the information on your contract face sheet.
California State Preschool Program full-day and part-day rates. As of January 2022, reimbursement rates are dependent upon the county in which services are provided. Current full-day and part-day county rates can be found at https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/aa/cd/documents/csppcontractrates.xlsx.
How many children can you serve with your maximum reimbursable amount, MRA? You can determine the amount of children you need to serve to fully earn your MRA by using these calculations. To calculate the number of full-time equivalent FTE children, first divide the MRA by the full-day rate to determine the cdes then divide the cdes by the MDO to calculate the number of FTE children. You can find the MRA and MDO on your contract face sheet. If serving in multiple service counties with multiple full-day rates refer to the cde calculator found on our webpage at https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/aa/cd/.
Now let's take a look at some examples. Here's an example if a contractor is serving in one service county. For this example, the MRA of 250,000 full day rate is 55.27 and the MDO is 240. First, we will divide the MRA of 250,000 by the full day rate of 55.27 to get the cdes of 4,523. Then take the cdes of 4,523 and divide by the MDO of 240 to get the FTE children of 18.846. What this means is a contractor needs to serve 19 children to fully earn their contract. Keep in mind that services may change depending on your MDO and category of children you are serving.
Now let's look at an example of a contractor that serves in two service counties with different full-day rates. For contractors serving in more than one service county, you will need to utilize the cde calculator to determine the cdes for each county. When using the cde calculator, you will need to input the MRA and percent of services you are serving in each county. For this example, for county one we will take the MRA of 250,000 multiplied by the 60 percent of services in this county to get a 150,000. Then take the 150,000 and divide it by the full-day rate of 55.27 to get the cdes of 2,714 for this county. Then we will do the same for the second county, take the MRA of 250,000 multiplied by 40 percent to get a 100,000. Then taking the 100,000 and dividing it by the full day rate of 60.75 to get the cdes of 1,646 for this county. To find the FTE children, we will take the total cdes for both counties of 4,360 and divide by the MDO of 240 to get 18.167 FTE children. For this example, you will need to serve 19 children to fully earn the contract.
Here's an example of a part-day part-year program. For this example, you would take, you would divide the MRA of 250,000 by the part-day rate of 34.23. For this example, to get the cdes of 7,303.5. Then take the cdes of 7,303.5 and divide by the MDO of 180 to get the full-time equivalent children of 40.575. You will need to serve 41 children to fully earn your contract. Note how many more children it will take to fill your program if only serving part-day part-year. You can find the part-day rate from the link in a previous slide. Now I am going to hand it over to my colleague Kuiana, who will take over. Thank you.
Kuiana Slaughter: Thank you, Jennifer. My name is Kuiana Slaughter and I'm a fiscal analyst in the EENFS unit. Now that we have talked about contract amendments, let's discuss attendance and fiscal reporting requirements.
The type of contract you have will indicate the report you need to use. CSPP reports are for direct service contracts and CPKS is for support contracts. Reports are updated yearly; reports can be found on the CDE’s website using the link here. Report revision notifications are done through list serv emails so make sure you are signed up to receive those notifications.
Title 5 regulations state that all contractors must certify reports at intervals specified in the annual child development contract. Contractors on conditional or provisional status shall report monthly. All other contractors shall submit reports quarterly for the periods ending: September 30, December 31, March 31, and June 30. Reports are due by the twentieth of the month following the end of the reporting period. If the twentieth falls on a weekend or holiday reports are due on the next business day. It is really important to certify your reports on time, as any reports not received by the due date will be considered delinquent and apportionment payments will be withheld. After certifying your reports, your fiscal analyst will calculate them and will send an email informing you that your earnings calculation, which is taken from your reported data, has been approved and is now available to view in CPARIS. If a report is not received, or there is an issue with the report, an email will be sent notifying you of an apportionment withhold. This occurs if we have attempted to make a payment before your report was accepted.
Here is a list of the reporting deadlines for contractors. Provisional and conditional contractors must certify reports each month by the twentieth. As stated before, if the twentieth falls on the weekend or holiday, the report is due the next state working day. You'll notice at the bottom of the slide for the June deadline, there is an extra report for reserve accounts that is due with the June year-end report. This report is required for contractors that have reserve accounts. Reserve accounts will be discussed later in the contract reimbursement presentation.
Now let's look at situations that affect your apportionment payments. Per Title 5, apportionments can be reduced, withheld, or canceled if one or more of the following conditions exist:
- The contractor has not submitted an acceptable audit for any prior year of operation on or before the due date.
- The contractor has not submitted the reports required on or before the due date.
And then 5. The contractor has accounts payable which are more than 90 days delinquent to CDE and not under appeal. As stated before, it is really important to submit and certify your reports on time, as any reports not received by the due date will be considered delinquent and an apportionment will be withheld. If your apportionment is being withheld for any other reasons I have stated, you will receive a notification via email.
Now that we have discussed reporting deadlines, let's discuss apportionment payments.
Each month's normal apportionment is the fixed percentage of your contract's MRA. Apportionments serve as advances. Apportionment amounts may be reduced based on projection calculation using data from the most recent Enrollment, Attendance and Fiscal Report. The initial apportionment represents payments through September and the projected contract earnings combined with the apportionment schedule in the EENFS fiscal handbook, to produce a flow of funds throughout the year that corresponds to the amount a contract is expected to earn.
Here's the apportionment schedule breakdown of the maximum percentage of your MRA your agency can earn each month. The initial apportionment percentage is the sum of percentages, July through September. For example, for all that have a fully executed contract, you will have received an apportionment in the sum of 25 percent of your contract. For most contractors who are required to report quarterly, all apportionment payments after October twentieth are based upon quarterly reported data. You can view the apportionment schedule in the EENFS fiscal handbook.
Let's talk about how you receive your apportionment. CDE has an ongoing partnership with the Foundation for California Community Colleges (Foundation CCC) to provide proficient. I'm sorry, to provide efficient and streamlined payment solutions to contractors. Foundation CCC transfers funds to a contractor's bank account or sends paper checks per the contractor's preference indicated on the jot form that was completed by contractors. Payment information will continue to be viewable in CPARIS and then further questions about direct deposit may be answered at the following website listed on the slide. If at any time you need to make a change to your submission, please email payments@foundationccc.org.
Apportionments will be authorized by EENFS based on the reports you are submitting. As soon as we receive an acceptable report, we process it and the report then generates an earnings projection sheet which will be viewable in CPARIS for your agency. Once we approve the apportionment, it is sent to Foundation CCC to be processed. Once the Foundation CCC processes the payment, they will send the payment to your agency based upon the delivery method you have selected, either a paper check or direct deposit. The entire process takes about 3 to 4 weeks once we receive acceptable reports.
Let's take a look at a sample warrant. The top right box is the warrant number, which is 3003862. In the top left box is the check identification number. July 13, 2023, is the issue date and 250,000 is the payment amount for that warrant.
This slide is a sample remittance advice that comes with the warrant for our contractor Oz Child Care. Under invoice ID, you'll see CD which stands for child development funds and the following 8 digits, 20230101 or the pay run number. This is an excellent indicator that this belongs to your early education contract payment. The next 4 digits are Oz Child Care’s vendor number, X431 and the last digit after the vendor number you can disregard. Previously the remittance advice had a breakdown of the payment information directly on it. Now you will need to use the pay run number when using your CPARIS portal, which we will be discussing that next to view your payment information. The amount will match the amount on the warrant. Your fiscal analyst and their phone number is there in case you have any questions, which is another indicator that this payment is for early education. Key things to identify your early education contract payment, your fiscal analyst’s name, and the invoice ID.
Lastly, we will be discussing the attendance and fiscal reporting and reimbursement procedures for early education contractors.
The EENFS fiscal handbook is an aid to explaining attendance and fiscal reporting reimbursement procedures. The role of the Fiscal and Administrative Services Division in the EENFS unit. The EENFS fiscal handbook combines information from the contract terms and conditions (CT&C) and the California Code of Regulations (CCR), Title 5 and the California Education Code. The EENFS fiscal handbook is updated annually, however, the 2023-24 edition is currently being completed. You can download the prior year fiscal handbook on the California Department of Education’s website listed at the link in the slide.
Corey Khan: Okay, do we have any questions? Hold on, I’m trying to pull up my participants. I see three hands raised. So again, I will unmute you. Let's see. It looks like Kathy Peebles. Let's try again. I'm going to allow you to talk. You'll need to unmute yourself now.
Kathy Peebles: I'm sorry I did that by mistake.
Corey Khan: Oh, okay, no problem. Thank you. Melissa Q, did you have a question?
Melissa Q.: No, thank you.
Corey Khan: Okay and then there's one more hand raise. It's the user that has the cle as the name. So, if you have a question, you are now able to talk if you unmute yourself. No? Okay, let's see. I do want to bring up a few questions that have been asked a few times that we've been responding to. So, I did and you know, for those that may not have been here in the beginning. We are recording this webinar with the hopes of posting it, but we do have accessibility requirements that we have to follow which includes transcribing everything that we say so it might take us a while. Also, you've seen in just in our first presentation, we have a lot of screenshots and due to accessibility requirements, we're not allowed to email or post those without having alternate text I think so, we are not able to post the slides as they are. So, if anything, we will be trying to go through a transcript to try to post the actual recording of this. A few other questions too came up. We are starting to post all the links in the chat as well. So as the presenters are going over the different links, you will see, I believe it's Yashima who is posting the actual links to the chat. Yeah, in the chat. And then there were a few questions, too, just about like, how do you get a copy of the face sheet that Jennifer had gone over and so there is a generic email box that you can email whenever you need a copy of your contract. So that has like all the contract terms on it, your contract amount, which is called the maximum reimbursable amount, or MRA. It has your minimum days of operation and that can be sent to earlyeducationcontracts@cde.ca.gov and I'll put that in the chat as well. I do see someone who raised their hand. I am going to call on them. It, let's see it's Tereadel Sosa.
Tereadel Sosa: Hi!
Corey Khan: Oh, hi!
Tereadel Sosa: I have a question regarding one of your slides. Um, trying to do the calculation with the MRA and MDO. The part-day rate, how would we find the rate for the part-day, the daily rate for that?
Corey Khan: So the part-day rate, so Yashima around 9:35 in the chat had posted a link that says fiscal year 2022-23 and 2023-24 rates can be found here.
Tereadel Sosa: 9:35?
Corey Khan: Yeah. So, there is a um, let's see. It's about the third to the last chat.
Tereadel Sosa: Okay.
Corey Khan: So you can, that has both the part-day and the full-day rates on there. So, you can.
Tereadel Sosa: Okay, I will look for it. Thank you so much.
Corey Khan: No problem. Okay, let's see. Melody De Lara, I'm going to unmute you. You'll have to unmute yourself too but you're able to talk. Melody, I see you're unmuted, but I don't hear you.
Melody De Lara: Oh, I'm sorry. I think it's an incorrect one. Sorry.
Corey Khan: Okay, you don't have a question?
Melody De Lara: No, not for now.
Corey Khan: Okay, okay. Cynthia K? I have-
Cynthia K: Can you hear me?
Corey Khan: Yes, I can.
Cynthias K: Oh, okay so I believe our director in the Continue Funding Application last year tried to amend the MDO on our contract but still this year's contract came with more days than our calendar actually is.
Corey Khan: Okay, so what you'll want to do is you'll want to submit a program calendar change to your PQI consultant. So, Crystal, I don't know if there's more that I should say there but if you want to chime in.
Crystal Devlin: Sure, hi everybody. Yeah, for calendar changes if your MDO is incorrect you're going to need to submit a program narrative change and a revised program calendar to your assigned program quality implementation office consultant and then they will process that and forward it to our fiscal team.
Cynthia K: Thank you so much, Crystal.
Crystal Devlin: You're welcome.
Corey Khan: Okay, and then we have another question or hand raised from Denise Gonsalves.
Denise Gonsalves: Hi, my question is also related to the MDO. So, I think I've been in other trainings before where they said you could go below your minimum days of operation by a certain percentage without penalty. Can you explain that a little bit? Does that have to do with our approved emergency closures? Or is that, if we just had to close and it didn't get approved as emergency closures? And how do we figure out that percentage?
Corey Khan: So we're going to go over this in a later presentation, it might even be the third day but since you asked it, I will say that there is what we call a two percent flex factor for your minimum days of operation, which means, I'm going to do an easy example. If you had a 100 days as your minimum days and I know this isn't real but 100 days, as your stated, minimum days of operation and you only serve 98 of those days we will credit you as if you received- you served a hundred days. Anything below 98 days in this example would be, you'd essentially, your MRA would be lowered by that percentage. So, let's say you only serve 97 days. That's 97 percent, that means at most you would only be able to earn 97 percent of your contract amount.
Denise Gonsalves: Okay and that's not emergency closures that are approved, that's other days?
Corey Khan: Right, that's just days where like, let's say, your original program calendar was submitted with your Continue Funding Application. You know, as days that you were going to be open. You didn't open for some reason and let's say it wasn't an emergency closure. It was just you, for some reason, change your calendar or something and failed to submit that program narrative change or sorry program calendar change that Crystal spoke to. That's where it could really hurt, how much you can earn of your contract in that year. So, we always suggest that, you know, if there is a change that you know, it might have just been a decision that your agency made that you know you thought you were going to be open one day, and you it turns out you're not. That's something you always want to just reach out to your consultant for.
Denise Gonsalves: Okay, we have done that and then when we submitted our calendar with our CFA it was denied, like they said, you can't go below the number you're already at. So, in that case, if it's not approved, that would be something that would count towards that 2 percent.
Corey Khan: Crystal, do you want to jump in on this too? Because there is a minimum that you're supposed to meet as a program.
Crystal Devlin: And we're actually, we actually have a presentation on program narrative changes and changes to your MDO later this morning. So, we'll go a little more into detail on this. But yeah, yeah. So, if your questions aren't answered during that you can ask again, or I could provide you with my email address.
Denise Gonsalves: Alright, sounds good. I'll wait for that later. Thank you.
Crystal Devlin: Okay.
Corey Khan: Okay, I'm going to unmute, let's see, Lisa Hicks? Lisa, do you have a question? You have to unmute yourself. I still see you on mute.
Lisa Hicks: No, I didn't have a question.
Corey Khan: Okay, okay. I do want to, I don't have any more hands raised at this time but I do want to go to one question in the chat. And it was, what up- can we go back to the contract FTE funding calculations really quick. So, Jenny, I know you're sharing your screen, so I don't know if you can go back. Not sure what the FT- what the question is. So, Julia Vandera is the one that asked it. So, Julia, if you want to raise your hand, or let me try to find you in the chat, I've allowed you to talk. If you want to actually speak to ask a question. I don't know what slide we should focus on.
Julia Vandera: Hi, yeah no, yes, that's exactly, the one before it, not the part-day, part-year. I just didn't take a picture of it quick enough. That, yep. Thank you, thank you. I just needed to make sure that, so I have it.
Corey Khan: Okay, no problem. And also, this is something that like, if you know, we have the funded enrollment calculator that we have posted on our website, there was a link put in the chat but, if at any time you know, you have questions about how many kids does my contract have, serve, you can reach out to your fiscal analyst and they can help you like with this calculation. It will require you as an agency to tell us some of your assumptions. We don't know that, but, we can definitely have a conversation about it, you know.
Julia Vandera: Thank you.
Corey Khan: Yup, no problem. Okay, one more hand up, I see, is Aalvarez23?
Aalvarez23: Yes.
Corey Khan: Hi, yes hi.
Aalvarez23: Hi, so my question is regarding the CPARIS quarter reports. So once the quarter has been submitted, can that quarter be revised in later quarters within the fiscal year? I am brand new to this. So, everything is new to me.
Corey Khan: Yes, it can be. And I'm going to call on Cate Washington, who's one of our managers who primarily overseas CPARIS.
Aalvarez23: Thank you.
Cate Washington: Morning, so there is a CPARIS user manual if you're logged into the system that is linked into the announcements on the right-hand side of the home screen and that user manual does review information on how to revise, so essentially, if you're revising a report that's already been certified, you can go in and revise that, reports do close periodically so if for some reason you can't get into revise it, you can reach out to your fiscal analyst. But to revise a previously certified report, you would navigate to reporting and then certified reports and if the report is open you're going to see a link on the right hand side that says edit report
Aalvarez23: Okay, so I have a follow up question. So that being the case and if that payment has been received since originally submitted, so will that create an adjustment for reimbursement? Or how would that work?
Cate Washington: It potentially will, every time you submit a report, we are recalculating and reprojecting your service earnings based on the data you've submitted. And that's just part of our normal process.
Aalvarez23: Okay, okay, that sounds good. Thank you so much.
Cate Washington: You're welcome.
Corey Khan: Okay, two other things that I just saw on the chat, Jenny. Sorry, can you go back and show the part-day slide. It was how to calculate the part-day, right there. Okay, so, Susan, this is for you. It says, please show the calculation for part-day one more time. So, this is, essentially, it's the same calculation for part-day full-day. You're just changing the part-day rate and the minimum days of operation. So, we'll leave it here just for one more quick second. And then, Jenny, there's one more request to go back to the foundation slide. So that has to do with the direct deposit. It would be towards yeah, forward, towards the end of the- the other way, other way, right here. So, this is the foundation slide. So, Rosita. Okay, so I'm going to leave that up. We have one other question with or one other person with their hand raised, so Victoria Dawson?
Victoria Dawson: Hi, good morning. I just had a question regarding the apportionment letters. I know previously before the hold harmless it was calculated and you'll have adjustment factor depending on your enrollment numbers. As we're currently under the hold harmless, are those apportionment letters and forgive me, because I have not seen one this fiscal year, but are those apportionment letters then going to still be delivered the same way to show what that reimbursement would look like based on the current enrollment numbers being reported? Or will it be modified to mimic kind of how we're getting reimbursed now?
Corey Khan: Those apportionment letters have been revised. Right?
Cate Washington: They've been revised. If you're interested in seeing what your service earnings are that is still calculated, based on the enrollment that you're reporting. So, you would find that in CPARIS as well. That would be in the reporting tab and certified reports listing and you can click on the contract earnings calculation and that will give you the information of the actual projected earnings of your contract. But the letters have been revised so they will reflect how you're being reimbursed, which would be the lesser of your contract, MRA or your net reimbursable costs.
Victoria Dawson: Okay, so we can still find the other information.
Cate Washington: The service earnings?
Victoria Dawson: Yes.
Cate Washington: Yes, you would find that in the contract earnings calculation.
Victoria Dawson: Perfect, thank you.
Cate Washington: You’re welcome.
Corey Khan: And Victoria, if you ever need help reviewing that, you can reach out to your fiscal analyst as well.
Victoria Dawson: Thank you.
Crystal Devlin: And Corey, I'd like to respond to something that's in the Q&A, around the 2% flex factor for the MDO. If you are approved for 243 days, you could technically be closed for 4 other days that are not approved emergency closures and your MRA will not be affected. So, I really want to stress the importance of the requirement which is in regulation for prior written approvals for any changes to your minimum days of operation. And so, we will go over that pretty thoroughly in a presentation later this morning, but it's really important that if you are going to have a decrease or increase to your days of minimum days of operation, then you do need to submit that program narrative change and revise program calendar.
Corey Khan: Thanks, Crystal. One thing that I'm seeing in the chat and we're going to go on after this, we're going to move on to our next presentation for the interest of time. But I do want to address it now, cause we're getting a lot of questions. So just questions about like hold harmless. What does that mean? So, I'm going to go over it. We're going to go over it again in other slides like tomorrow, but because it just keeps getting brought up, I want to do, I want to mention it. So, what we've been calling hold harmless, what that means is in a normal fiscal year, like I said, you have, you usually have to earn your contract by providing services to kids. And so, contract reimbursement in a normal year is based on your enrollment, which we calculate like, we turn it into a dollar amount by using the adjustment factors and the rate and your enrollment that you report. So that's what we call your service earnings. So, it's the lesser of your service earnings, your contract maximum reimbursable amount or your net cost. So, if you have low enrollment, even if your costs are what they are, we will only pay you up to your low or you know whatever is less. So, your low enrollment, on the flip side, if you have low cost, but you have the enrollment that equals like your MRA. We would only pay you up to your costs. So that's in a normal year and a hold harmless year and hold harmless sort of came about through Covid and the effects of Covid. You know what the effects of Covid had on programs. So, for example, we knew that enrollment was down and it has taken a while. We're still not to the level of enrollment of pre-Covid, but we're slowly getting there. But, because of that the state and the legislature and the budget has, you know, since 2020 has pretty much made contract reimbursement based off of the lesser of your contract amount or net cost. So, they took away that requirement to enroll kids. So, when we say under hold harmless, your reimbursement under hold harmless, we're literally talking about, we're only looking at the lesser of your contract amount or your net cost. So, that we will talk about tomorrow in a policy update presentation, essentially hold harmless what we know right now goes until June 30, 2025. So, contract reimbursement through June 30, 2025 will be based on the lesser of your contract amount or net costs, not taking into consideration enrollment. So hopefully that clears that up. I want to move on to our next presentation just because we're about at time, but we will continue to take questions at the end, and you can ask in the chat as well. So, like I said, this next presentation is going over the rules and requirements for attendance and fiscal reporting. Very, very, very high level. We're trying to lay the groundwork for why we collect certain information. Also, please note that attendance and enrollment, like I said, doesn't play into your contract reimbursement this year but there are still regs and requirements that require you, as an agency, to report your attendance and enrollment still. So, this is sort of the rules and laws and regs that govern these requirements. So, I'm going to turn it over, I believe, first to Bryant to start our presentation.
Bryant Jimenez Lopez: Good morning, my name is Bryant and my partner Elly Rodriguez– we're going to talk to you about rules and requirements for CSPP Attendance and Fiscal Reporting. So, what we will be presenting to you are very specific actual laws, regulations and contract terms and conditions of your California State Preschool Program and how those laws directly relate to reporting your attendance and fiscal data to the state. Throughout this presentation, I will be reading some of the actual source material to you but will be expanding upon the information as well as showing you where to report the data on your fiscal reports. Our goal with this presentation is to give you the background, the tools and the sources to help keep you in compliance with your contract terms and help make you successful. As we move through the rest of the presentations, you will see how laws, regulations, and contract terms are applied. So, let's take a look at some of the topics we will discuss today.
Today we will be discussing contractor’s responsibilities, enrollment and attendance data, revenue expenses and startup. All of these topics directly relate to how you report to us on our fiscal reporting form and this presentation should give you a good foundation for some of the important rules and regulations that you need to know. Let's get started with your responsibilities as a contractor.
It is important to note that it is your responsibility as a contractor to know the details of the contract terms from all sources. This includes law known as Education Code, regulations which are also known as the California Code of Regulations or Title 5, contract terms and conditions for Early Education Programs. We often refer to this as CT&Cs. The Enrollment, Attendance and Fiscal Reporting Reimbursement Procedures for Early Education Contracts known as the Fiscal Handbook. This will almost always be your first go-to source, most if not all of the information covered today can be found in the Fiscal Handbook as well as a lot of other topics. A team of our fiscal analysts update the Fiscal Handbook each year for our contractors to have the most up to date information and legal and regulatory information come contained in the Education Management Bulletins.
Now let's move on to enrollment and what are the responsibilities of a contractor surrounding enrollment. On the slide we have listed the sections of Title 5 that relate to enrollment. Determining enrollment is not within the purview as fiscal analysts, however eligibility falls under the programmatic side with the Early Education Division or EED. Title 5 requires contractors to verify the family or children that are receiving subsidized care. This is done through the process of initial certification. Here's how Title 5 defines initial certification. The formal process the contractor goes through to collect information and documentation to determine that the family and or child meets the criteria for receipt of subsidized preschool services. So, eligibility and certification are in the purview of the program office, but our offices intertwine when it comes to enrollment and reporting. Now that you have enrolled the certified child to your program, we in the fiscal office then require you to accurately report that enrollment based on how you certified that child and of course that reporting will happen on the attendance and fiscal forms that you send to us. This is due to Title 5 Section 17821(a), which states contractors shall submit reports containing the following information for each contract to the CDE at intervals specified in the annual preschool contract. And the first item listed is days and hours of enrollment and attendance for all children served in the program in the current reporting period and year to date. I also want to highlight Section 4 subsection C of the Contracting Terms and Conditions that states the child shall not be enrolled in more than one program for the same time period on the same day.
Now where is this enrollment information collected? You may have guessed it, on the Enrollment, Attendance and Fiscal Reports. Here we have an example of the first tab of our Enrollment and Attendance Report, which is the Enrollment and Attendance tab. On the Enrollment and Attendance tab, you will report the certified days of enrollment or cdes. A cde is any day that a certified child is enrolled for the program. Agencies will input current data for the reporting period in the current period column. To the left of the current period column, you will see the cumulative prior period section. The report will auto populate the total child days of enrollment from the from all the adjustment factor categories that were previously entered. As you can see, the prior period is an example. In the example, the report submission is a July report, which is the first report, which is why all the prior period data are zeroes. In the example, the agency reported 372 days of enrollment for 4 years and older part-time and 422 days of enrollment in the dual language learners part-time category. These numbers are the total days of enrollment in each adjustment category for the July reporting period. Please note, not shown on the screen is the non-certified enrollment section. The Enrollment and Attendance tab is split into two portions. The first portion is for reporting certified enrollment and the second for non-certified. Children with non-certified enrollment are children who are present in the classroom but are not actually certified as part of the CSPP program. These children might be paid for by another program or another funding source, but for the sake of our reports they should be reported as non-certified. It is important to accurately track and report each group separately. I do want to note that some agencies’ reports will look slightly different. If your agency serves in multiple counties, right under the Enrollment and Attendance Tab multiple counties will appear and the agency will select the specific county and report enrollment for the children served within that county.
Which brings us to adjustment factors, Education Code Section 8244 states in order to reflect the additional expense of serving full-day preschool and part-day preschool children who meet any of the criteria outlined in the contractor's reported child days of enrollment for these children shall be multiplied by these adjustment factors. What all this means is that the laws and regulations take into account that the needs for different families and children require different levels of care which might translate into the different levels of expense. These adjustment factors convert a child's actual days of enrollment into adjusted days of enrollment for the sake of calculating the potential reimbursement for that child. There are two main categories for these adjustment factors: time-based adjustment factors and special criteria adjustment factors. I will go into more detail about each of them in my following slides.
Effective January 1, 2022, the method of determining the time-based categories has changed. Contractors should utilize the hours approved for care to determine the appropriate time-based categories where a child should be reported. Currently Title 5, Section 17836 states that when a child's certified schedule is 30 hours per week or greater, they should be reported in the full-time category. For children that are, for children with a certified schedule of less than 30 hours per week, the child should be reported in the part-time category. Since the presentation was printed before the passage of SB 140, please make note that SB 140 will adjust the full-time category to being a certified schedule of 25 hours or more and the part-time category to a certified schedule of less than 25 hours.
Here we have the standard time-base adjustment factors. Title 5 Section 17837 states that full-time, part-time, part-time plus adjustment factors are specifically listed in laws and regulations. They're listed as: full-time adjustment factor is 1.0, the part-time is based on the contractor’s service county and full-time plus is 1.18. Then these adjustment factors are multiplied by the specific rate for your county.
Here we have an example of all the standard time-based adjustment factors. The image shows the section of the 4-year-old with the standard time-based adjustment factors: full-time plus, full-time and part-time When reporting a child's days of enrollment, please be sure to select the correct category and the correct time-base. The cdes for the most recent reporting period will go in the current period. The cumulative fiscal year will automatically add the prior period data and the current period to get the total, the current total cdes. The adjustment factors are all located after the cumulative fiscal year. To determine your adjusted days of enrollment, the cumulative fiscal year data is multiplied by the adjustment factors and is shown in the last column. As you can see, the 42 days of enrollment reported in the 4 years and older full-time plus category increase to 46.2 cdes due to the adjustment factor. This is to account for the different levels of expense for the adjustment category.
Moving on to the other types of adjustment factors, special criteria adjustment factors. This slide shows all special criteria categories authorized by Education Code Section 8244(b); children with exceptional needs have an adjustment factor of 2.40. Children at risk and neglect or abuse have an adjustment factor of 1.1. Children who are dual language learners have an adjustment factor of 1.2. Children who receive early childhood mental consultation services have an adjustment factor of 1.1. Children 47 months and younger have an adjustment factor of 1.8. Most of these categories will need additional documentation in order to report child days of enrollment within these categories. Please contact your EED consultant for additional information. Once again, children should always be reported in the category they are certified in and should only be reported in one category, even if they fall into multiple. For example, if an agency serves a child who has both exceptional needs and is also a dual language learner. The child should only be reported in one of those two special criteria sections. In these cases, you would report the children in whichever category had the highest adjustment factor for their time-base. In this example, exceptional needs category would have the higher adjustment factor. Here now we have an example of the special criteria adjustment factors. This screenshot shows the reporting of just one special criteria category, which is exceptional needs. Children who have exceptional needs, are at risk of abuse, have limited English proficiency, or are severely disabled each have their own line on the reporting form. Once again, children should always be reported in the category they are certified in and should only be reported in one category if they fall into multiple.
So now, moving on we have days of operation. Title 5, Section 17821(a)(2) states contractors shall submit reports containing the following information for each contract to the CDE at intervals specified in the annual preschool audit: total days of operation in the current reporting period and year to date. As probably most of you are aware, days of operation are required field on our reporting forms. A day of operation is a day where your agency was open to serve certified children during the current reporting period. These days you are reporting should be based on the service calendar that you provided to the CDE. Reporting days of operation accurately will play a part in the calculation of your reimbursement. We will look more into the calculation during other presentations. If changes to your program calendar are required, please reach out to your respective EED consultant.
Here we have the section of Title 5, where it speaks to attendance, accounting, and attendance reporting. Section 17818 states that contractors shall use daily sign-in and sign-out sheets as the primary source document for audit and reimbursement purposes and that only one of the following persons shall answer the time of arrival and departure:
- The parent or other authorized or other adult authorized by the parent to drop off and pick up a child.
- Or the staff person designated by the contractor as the person responsible for entering the times of arrival and times of departure if the child is not dropped off or picked up by another parent or other adult authorized by the parent.
As sign-in and sign-out sheets are being reviewed, contractors should ensure that full signatures are being used.
So, the screenshots at the bottom of the page show the lower section of the Enrollment and Attendance tab. Here is where the total days of enrollment, days of attendance and days of operation will be reported. Everything on the first line, the total days of enrollment will populate for you based on the enrollment information that you've entered above in the various adjustment factor sections. Below the total days of enrollment is where you would enter the days of attendance. Please note that the days of attendance will always be equal to or less than the days of enrollment. After all, a child cannot be in attendance for a day which they're not enrolled. You will calculate the days of attendance in the same way you did the days of enrollment, except you would only count the days that a child was present, had an excused absence, or the child's parent indicated that they wanted to use a day of best interest. As for days of operation, your agency will report the current days of operation. Please note that the cumulative days of operation should match the calendar that you've provided to the CDE for your program. If you have to make any changes to your calendar’s days of operation, please reach out to your EED consultant, which leads us to our next slide.
Excused absences, according to Education Code Section 8205(c) attendance means the number of children present at a preschool facility. Attendance for the purposes of reimbursement includes excused absences by children because of illness, quarantine, illness or quarantine of their parent or a family emergency or to spend time with a parent or other relative as required by a court of law, or that is clearly in the best interest of a child. Now, what qualifies as an excused absence per Education Code should be clearly outlined and defined in your parent handbook. You should also include what your agency considers a family emergency and how many consecutive days those reasons will excuse. Some examples of a family emergency might be a death in the family or a parent who calls because they do not have transportation. In this second example, your parent handbook might define lack of transportation as being excused for the first two days immediately after the family's car breaks down, but any days beyond that would be considered unexcused. The definition is up to your agency, but it should be clearly defined in the parent handbook, and you must adhere to your own policies. Contract Terms and Conditions, Section 4D states that if the absence is claimed by the contractor as an excused absence, the attendance accounting records shall contain verification, including the name of the child, the date or dates of the absence, the specific reason of the absence and the signature of the parent or contractor’s authorized representative if verification is done by phone. For instance, if a child called in, if a parent called in that a child was sick, the person who is authorized to receive the call is responsible for notating the excused absence on the sign-in and out sheets. This notation will serve as verification for the excused absence. Make sure you are adhering to your own policies outlined in your parent handbook and that you are keeping accurate records. If our analysts come out for a fiscal review, we will be checking the sign-in and out sheets and verifying that everything aligns with what you have been reporting. Any days where it is not clearly documented why a child is absent will be counted as an unexcused absence and will be disallowed as a day of attendance.
A day of best interest. Title 5, Section 17819 states contractors shall adopt reasonable policies delineating circumstances that would constitute an excused absence for a family emergency and in the best interest of a child. Most often these are– most often vacation is considered a day of best interest. We will discuss days of best interest more in depth during a later presentation, but to give you a quick example if you, the contractor, have been notified by the parent that a child will not be attending a day of school because they have– they're going on vacation. This would be considered a day of best interest for the child. It is still considered an excused absence and will be recorded as a day of best interest on your source documents. Please keep in mind that these days of best interest are in the best interest of a child, not in the best interest of an agency for attendance and reporting purposes. So it should be determined by the family if your child will be using one of their ten allowable best interest days and remember that it is your responsibility to keep a record of the best interest days for each certified child in your program. More clarification on this can be found within the EENFS Fiscal Handbook.
Next, we will discuss Closures Beyond Contractor’s Control. Formerly known as Emergency Closures. This may apply to some agencies affected by the recent hurricanes. Education Code Section 8206 states that when emergency– when an emergency is declared by the governor, contractors will not be penalized for the closure. An example of this is the COVID-19 pandemic and Education Code Section 8249 states that in emergencies beyond contractors control including earthquakes, floods, or fire such programs shall not be penalized for incurring program expenses nor in subsequent annual budget allocations. An example of a Closure Beyond Contractor’s Control that is not declared by the Governor would be a case where a pipe burst and flooded the classroom, which caused it to shut down for a period of time or it could include fires, flooding, power outages or any other storm related situations that cause you to close. The point is that it is beyond the control of the operating agency. If this occurs, your agency will report the days of enrollment, but will not include the days of attendance and days of operation for the days that– for these days until you have received approval from your EED consultant. If you’d like more information regarding Closures Beyond Contractor’s Control, please contact your EED consultant and review Management Bulletin 21-10. Now I will hand it over to Elly as we're going to move on to laws and regulations, as it relates to reporting fiscal data starting with revenue.
Ellyssa Rodriguez: Thank you, Bryant. Hello everybody, my name is Ellyssa Rodriguez, and I will– we'll now be going over the revenue section of this presentation. Hello everybody, shown here are the requirements for reporting revenue. Title 5 requires you to report revenue other than contract funds or apportionment payments that you receive that are used for your preschool program. Now let's talk about how revenue is defined and reported.
On the screen we see a portion of the revenue section from the Enrollment, Attendance and Fiscal Report. Much like the attendance pages, you will see that there is a column for prior period data, current period data and then a final column is calculated for the cumulative fiscal year or year to date information. In this example, we can see on the screen that this contractor had reported $7,500 in restricted income. Other or ARPA funds received in the current period, which then carried over to the cumulative fiscal year column. In the next couple of slides we will review the information that is entered into each section of the revenue section.
Now let's discuss family fees. Shown on the screen are rules for collecting family fees. Families shall be assessed in a single flat monthly fee for all state subsidized early childhood services received. Family fees shall be assessed at initial enrollment and reassessed at recertification. Family fees shall be used by contractors to pay reasonable and necessary costs for providing additional services. In addition to contract funds you receive to provide services, family fees collected should be used on reimbursable costs to provide services for certified children. This also states that those family fees are to be spent before contract funds. You will learn more about this in another presentation, when they discuss how we calculate your apportionment payment. So, keep this in mind for that time and please also note that family fees were to be waived between July 1, 2023, and September 30, 2023.
Next, we will review interest. The Contract Terms and Conditions state if a contractor places advanced contract funds in an interest-bearing account, the interest-bearing account shall be a separate account within the Child Development Fund. Interest earned shall be retained by the contractors if it is expended on reimbursable costs and earned by increasing their service earnings beyond the contractor's maximum reimbursable amount. You are not required to keep apportionment payments made to your agency in an interest-bearing account. However, if you do decide to keep those apportionment payments in an interest-bearing account it is required you report this interest as revenue on the fiscal page of our forms. Very similar to the family fees, this interest income would also be used towards reimbursable costs in the program and would be used first before additional contract funds are earned.
On the screen here you will see an image of the restricted income portion of the revenue section, showing the line items for family fees for certified children as well as interest earned on apportionment payments. In this example, we can see that this contractor reported $200 in waived family fees. This is in compliance with the direction to waive family fees July 1, 2023, through September 30, 2023. After September 30, 2023, this contractor would report any collected family fees on the line right below labelled Collected Family Fees for Certified Children. We can also see $60 in interest earned has been reported as well. You will see how this section of the report affects your apportionment payment calculation in a later presentation, but for now it's important to note where this information is on the report.
Now let us discuss the topic of unrestricted income. If you have non-certified children receiving services in your program, this slide indicates where the funds collected for non-certified children should be reported. Fees collected directly from non-certified families will be reported on the fees for non-certified children line of the report. If income for services to non-certified children comes from a source other than families, it should be reported on the Enrollment, Attendance and Fiscal Report as other under restricted income and the source and purpose should be specified. While it is up to the agency to make sure that the non-certified children are being— while it is up to the agency to make sure that the non-certified children are being funded by sources other than the contract apportionment payments. Not all of those funds must come directly from the non-certified families. The funds used to help cover the cost of non-certified children should be reported on the other line of the unrestricted income portion of revenue. So, for example, if you have a big fundraiser each year, or receive a grant from your county or some other organization that is used to cover the non-certified children, then it would be included here as other unrestricted income.
Head Start is also included as unrestricted income. These funds can be used to provide services for non-certified children, but they can also be used to provide a full-day of service to those children who are currently certified with the CSPP program for part-day services. Federal Head Start funds used to provide services to families receiving California state preschool services shall be deemed nonrestricted funds. If you have Federal Head Start funds that are used to provide a full-day of service to part-day CSPP children, this requires you to report those funds as non-restricted. There is also additional information in the EENFS fiscal handbook on Head Start funds. The EENFS fiscal handbook provides different examples on Head Start and this information begins specifically on page 45.
On the screen you will now see the portion of the revenue section where Head Start should be reported. You can see the line fees for non-certified children, Head Start and the other line for any additional funding sources. In this example there has been $100 in Head Start revenue reported as indicated by the red arrow. This is the end of the revenue section and now we will move on to expenses.
Now let's review expenses. Let me start by asking if anyone here has commingled program, meaning that you have both certified and non-certified children present in the same classroom at the same time. This is a common case for most contractors and this slide applies to those situations. When it comes to your expenses, Title 5 states that your report shall include all services, revenues, and expenditures for both subsidized and non-subsidized children. Total expenditure is related to the program operation. To be clear, this means that if you have both certified and non-certified children like a private pay family commingled, you should be reporting all of the program’s expenses. Our calculations will use the enrollment data that you've provided before to cost allocate these expenses between the two groups of children. So, it is important that you report everything so that the calculations are not being skewed.
Shown above here is the reimbursable expenses section of the Enrollment, Attendance and Fiscal Report and is where all reimbursable expenses are to be reported. In the example above, we can see the total reimbursable expenses total to $159,000 indicated by the red arrow. The breakdown of expenses and the layout of the form will likely be familiar, but in the next few slides I am going to point out a few important items that fall under expense reporting. Starting with equipment bidding.
Now let's discuss equipment— (several inaudible words) conditions for child development contracts have set— (several inaudible words).
Corey Khan: Elly, Elly um—
Ellyssa Rodrigez: (Several inaudible words).
Corey Khan: Elly, you're breaking up a lot.
Ellyssa Rodriguez: (Several inaudible words). Hello?
Corey Khan: You're breaking up a lot. We couldn't hear anything when you got to the slide, so I don't know if you moved or something.
Ellyssa Rodriguez: Oh. Hi, can everybody hear me?
Corey Khan: Yeah, that sounds better.
Ellyssa Rodriguez: Okay, sorry everybody. Let me start again.
Corey Khan: So, can you start again?
Ellyssa Rodriguez: Yeah, sorry about that. I don't know what happened. Zoom is not wanting me to finish my presentation, but let’s take it from the top on this slide. So now let's discuss equipment bidding. The Funding Terms and Conditions for child development contracts have set thresholds around obtaining bids and prior approvals for equipment purchases. This slide has the Title 5 section that speaks specifically to equipment. When expenditures for equipment, equipment replacement and improvements exceed the level specified in the annual preschool contract, private contractors shall obtain at least three bids or estimates. The threshold for requiring three bids is $5,000. So, if the purchase is over $5,000, you will need to get three bids or estimates. When expenditures for equipment, equipment replacement and improvements exceed the level specified in the annual preschool contract, the contractor shall request prior written approval from the Early Education Division. Now Title 5 leaves the amount open, but in the Contract Terms and Conditions, the threshold for this requirement is listed at $10,000. Any purchases you make over $10,000 will require written approval in advance from the CDE to make sure that the purchase will be reimbursable by the contract.
Now we can review the equipment approvals. If a purchase is over $10,000, the agency must submit a request for approval of equipment prior to their purchase. The appropriate form can be found on the CDE’s website. The agency must also attach three bids, or the documentation indicating why three bids were not available. This will also be submitted to your EED program consultant.
On this slide, we can see that the Contract Terms and Conditions speak to how a purchase should be totaled to see if it qualifies for either the bidding or approval requirements. All equipment and equipment replacement purchases that meet either of the following criteria shall be approved in writing in advance by the CDE if either of the following applies:
- The per-unit acquisition cost equals or exceeds the lesser of the capitalization level established by the contractor for financial statement purposes, or $5,000, including tax or
- The sum of all items included in the purchase equals $10,000 or more, including tax, shall be approved in writing in advance by the CDE.
Subdividing any purchases into smaller parts to avoid any of the bidding or approval requirements is prohibited. All expenses associated with the purchase that are necessary for the equipment to perform its intended purpose should be included in determining if a prior approval is required. For example, say your agency is looking into buying a computer. You would have to take into consideration all components for the computer to function such as any software you might need, a mouse or a keyboard. Now, before we move on, I want to make mention that you will also be required to keep an inventory list, which is different than the equipment approval requirement I just spoke about. The inventory list will include any items you have purchased in whole or in part with state funds and not just for items that exceed a certain threshold. We are going to go over inventory more later, but I wanted to comment on it while we were talking about the equipment.
Now let's discuss subcontracting. Similar to the bidding and approval process for equipment, the CDE has received a number of questions over the past few years about subcontracting. So, the next couple of slides will speak to this topic. In general, a subcontract is any agreement or contract that an agency enters into to provide a good or service to support their child development program. Title 5 also provides some expectations to the general subcontracting rules that are found in the Contract Terms and Conditions of your contract. The following types of service agreements do not require a written subcontract and are not subject to the regulations contained in this article:
- Employment agreements
- Facility rental or lease agreements
- Payment arrangements with family child care homes
- Medical or dental service agreements
- Bookkeeping/audit agreements, except for section 17798
- Food services agreements
- Janitorial and groundskeeping agreements
- A subcontract with a public agency, and;
- Subcontracts with an individual less than $10,000
So, these are all the exclusions to the subcontracting requirements.
Continuing on the topic of subcontracting. Here we pulled out some of the important parts of the Contract Terms and Conditions about subcontracts for your agencies. These are important when subcontracting with a private agency. Remember, the previous slide was a list of exclusions. Shown here are the requirements. One example, you might call your consultant about your internet provider agreement. Let's say you entered a lease agreement that requires you only use one specific internet provider like Comcast. Now, in order to stay compliant with your lease, you would have to use that internet provider and you may not be able to get three bids if there was only the one option. Through your conversation with your consultant, they will be able to help you determine that this agreement would be exempt from the subcontracting requirements of the Funding Terms and Conditions. Determining whether a subcontract is exempt can also depend on whether or not the agreement enters your state contract into a future liability. For example, early cancellation fees. Just remember that the best practice when navigating the requirements of subcontracts is always to get in touch with your EED program consultant and let them help you figure out what is required specific to your subcontracting situation.
The final slide relating to subcontracting is in regard to audit requirements. Subcontractors for the operation of one or more of a contract's preschool program shall be audited in accordance with CDE Audit Guidelines. The audit of the subcontractor shall be submitted to the CDE as follows: school districts, county offices of education, community colleges and directly funded charter schools shall submit the audit of the subcontract by the fifteenth day of the fifth month following the fiscal year in which the subcontracted services were performed. For management and or direct service contracts, the subcontractor shall maintain records for a program review, evaluation, audit and or other purposes and make the records available to the state for a period of five years.
Okay, let's move on to other expense related line items. Here we have indirect cost reporting information. As you may know, indirect cost are those costs that cannot be readily assigned to one specific line item within the CSPP fiscal report page line items, 1,000 through 5,000. The next portion up there is a bit of a mouthful and speaks differently to LEAs versus private agencies. Effectively for all of you present, unless your district has a negotiated lower maximum rate, your maximum indirect cost rate is 10%. In general, indirect costs are anything that supports an organization as a whole and cannot be reasonably allocated to a specific program. So, to explain direct versus indirect cost I'll use rent as some examples. In the first example, a small contractor has one building and operates one CSPP contract. In this case, all of the rent is a direct cost to the CSPP. In our second example, a contractor has one building and operates Head Start CSPP and CCTR. At this point rent becomes a shared direct cost and could reasonably be allocated based on the square footage. Our last example would be a large contractor has one office that serves as a general administration office that supports multiple programs. In this example, the administrative office's rent is an indirect cost because it could not be reasonably allocated based on square footage as in the previous examples. Your CPA should be able to provide guidance regarding an indirect cost allocation plan if needed.
Closely related to the previous slide, we have administrative costs. Reimbursable costs include but are not limited to administrative costs do not exceed 15 percent of net reimbursable program costs. Such costs include activities that do not provide a direct benefit to the children, parents, or providers. For example, you may have an assistant or a secretary at your site, who spends a part of their time working on reporting which is purely administrative and does not directly benefit the children or families. This time could be allocated to the program as an administrative cost. Other examples might include costs for travel, postage, or outside consultants. Administrative costs include any allowance for indirect costs and audits. So when you are filling out your Enrollment, Attendance and Fiscal Reports please make sure to include any indirect costs that you have reported as part of your administrative costs.
On the screen we have an image with the bottom of the fiscal page highlighted to show where the indirect and total administrative cost line items are located. In this section, you will be reporting all of your expenses that you have been able to classify into one of the various line item categories. Any expenses that you were not able to allocate to any particular line item, per your cost allocation plan would then be reported as indirect cost down at the bottom here on the indirect cost line. All of these expenses sum up to give you the total reimbursable expenses. Now because there is a maximum 15% total allowance for the administrative costs, it is necessary to make sure that those expenses are also being tracked. While your administrative costs were all included in their associated categories up above, such as certified salaries or other operating expenses. They also need to be pulled out and added down here at the bottom. Additionally, since the indirect cost could not be associated with the line– with the above line items. These are also included as part of the total administrative costs at the bottom here for tracking purposes. Please note here that the total administrative cost line will need to be manually calculated and please also note that the indirect costs are to be included in the administrative costs. Of the 5,000 reported on the administrative cost line, this also includes the $100 of indirect costs. So, in this example, the agency is reporting $100 in indirect costs in the current period that they could not readily assign to any of the categories above. The total administrative cost of $5,000 indicated by the red arrow also includes the $100 for indirect costs. The data reported for admin costs is used to determine that you have not exceeded the allowed 15%. The report form will allow you to report any amount on this line, but please know that if you do exceed the 15% the excess will be disallowed. So please make sure you are tracking your indirect and administrative costs internally to stay below that threshold. And remember that indirect costs must be included as part of the administrative cost therefore it can never be greater than the administrative costs.
We would also like to spend a little time to discuss one particular line item from the fiscal report in a little more detail and that is start-up. Start-up is available to new CSPP contractors. For example, those that were awarded through RFA process, or to existing contractors that were awarded funds which were relinquished from another agency in their county. This is the Education Code section that was the basis for that process. If you were not already aware of start-up, here's a basic overview from regulations shown here. There are a few things to keep in mind here. First, start-up funds are not an increase to your MRA. These funds come from your existing award that would have not otherwise been earned. Secondly, these start-up costs need to be approved by the CDE before they can be claimed. Start-up will actually become a term of your contract. Approval will be based on whether the items being requested are both reasonable and necessary for getting a new program started. Lastly, note that the start-up request cannot exceed 15% of your CSPP expansion award, the total annualized award amount. It is not mentioned in this particular ED Code, but I also wanted to point out that start-up requests are able to be revised during the fiscal year as long as you submit the revision before the end of the fiscal year and all costs are incurred within the fiscal year. Meaning that none of the expenses can carry over into the next fiscal year. For example, perhaps when you originally submitted your start-up request, maybe the quote for the installation of a structure was higher than what you actually ended up paying. You could revise your start-up and resubmit to reallocate some of those funds to cover other expenses you'd had during the beginning of the year. Perhaps new desks or classroom supplies, for example.
Another part of start-up to keep in mind is that it counts as a service level exemption. You will be able to see how this actually affects your calculations later in the presentation, when we go over the calculation worksheet. If all or part of the 15% allowable start-up costs is needed and spent, that portion will not have to be earned through provisions of services. Now what do we mean by that? When new funding is awarded, there is a good chance that many of you will have a period of time where you are not yet fully enrolled. However, even though you aren't serving children or aren't serving at full enrollment, you still have costs that can be incurred while you get your program up and running. Start-up is used to take this into consideration. I know this is a lot of information and might be confusing if this is your first-time hearing of start-up, so please talk to your EENFS fiscal analyst if you have questions or would like to request start-up.
Shown on the screen here, we wanted to have an image to show you that the line item for start-up is separate from the rest of your expenses. Please make sure you are tracking and reporting these expenses separately, because they will affect the calculations for your apportionment payments, as you will see later in another presentation. It is also very important that any start-up expenses are reported only on this line and are not also included above. Otherwise, your agency will be double reporting its expenses. We can see in this example the agency has reported $12,000 so far indicated by the red arrow. In this example, perhaps the agency requested start-up for some of their books and supplies. At the time of this report, they have spent $12,000 on books and supplies that they had requested as start-up. Those expenses are reported only on the start-up line and not above on line 4,000.
This wraps up the rules and requirements presentation. The main goal was to help introduce you into some of the details of the report, but also to show how the laws and regulations require you to report the information. I know this was a lot of information, but hopefully we've helped to lay a good foundation for you as you move forward through the rest of the presentation. Do we have any questions?
Allen Lynch: Thank you, Elly. I'm going to go ahead and step in real quick. We'll take a couple of questions from the hands that are raised and then we will take a short break. And maybe try and answer some of the questions that are still in the Q&A when we get back. And I see a bunch of hands are going up right now, but I will start with the first one I have listed, Cynthia K. If you'd like to unmute yourself.
Cynthia K: Hello, actually, throughout these two presentations I wrote three questions about three different topics. The first one is about the sign-in and sign-out sheet about attendance recording. It said on this slide that the signature we record can be from the staff so we could be the teacher signature on that. Maybe for whatever reason the parent couldn't sign, or the Internet was down, or whatever could that teacher put that signature there for?
Allen Lynch: So, there should be a staff member designated by your agency as an authorized individual to do this sign-in and sign-out sheet. So that would be the individual who's taking the call from the parent for the absence. They'd be the one who would be providing that signature for that that particular date.
Cynthia K: And then it is required to put a note there? Sorry.
Allen Lynch: Yes, you’d want to have a reason for the absence there as well.
Cynthia K: I mean, it's a day that the child was present, but for whatever reason, let's say on the sign-out time the parent left without signing out. Could they put a note there and sign?
Allen Lynch: If you have, if you have the whoever's designated as the authorized individual from your agency. They can sign for that child over the time in. That's not a problem.
Cynthia K: Should I ask the other two questions at this moment?
Allen Lynch: Go ahead.
Cynthia K: The other one is about equipment purchasing, completely different topic. So those amounts the 5,000 or the 10,000, that's assuming that that purchase is going to come a hundred percent out of the CSPP funds, right? Cause sometimes that make up–
Allen Lynch: So the total cost here is before any cost allocation. So it's the total cost of the purchase even if you're going to split it between programs or between CSPP and another fund source. If the total cost is above those thresholds, you'll need to get your prior approvals. Or if the bids or however– or whatever situation it is, but that's based on the total cost prior to cost allocation.
Cynthia K: Okay, thank you so much. And the last one was just explain again the staff training costs on the report in CPARIS. I'm not sure why that's singled out there. I'm sorry if I missed that explanation, but I didn't understand why we report that like that.
Allen Lynch: I'm not sure I understand the question. Is there someone else who can respond?
Cynthia K: She can repeat the line on CPARIS where we put the staff training cost. I didn't understand.
Crystal Devlin: Is Cate available to answer that question?
Yashima Daniels: I think–
Crystal Devlin: Oh yeah Yashima.
Yashima Daniels: Yeah, I think she's referring to the staff. So, the separate staff training cost line is related to when your agency is potentially closed for those two days of staff training. That's where those costs would go. So, when you're not open to provide a day of services to any certified children because the entire staff is participating in like staff training or development of some sort. And so, you're not providing services. So that's when you would report those costs on that specific line.
Cynthia K: Alright, that's the new set and not anywhere else, right? Don't double report it?
Yashima Daniels: That– let me check on. Cate, is that one, is that set up like startup? Or is it in both? Sorry, is Cate here?
Cate Washington: Sure, I'm here. Sorry, I believe that is recorded in both places, unlike startup.
Yashima Daniels: Thank you. I always get that one confused.
Cynthia K: Thank you.
Allen Lynch: Okay, great so we'll move on to the next individual I have listed here. Beth Reeves-Fortney, are you available?
Beth Reeves-Fortney: Yes, I am available.
Allen Lynch: Do you have a question?
Beth Reeves-Fortney: I have a comment and it may be a question. The Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation, which can give you an adjustment, but it has very specific requirements that are new I believe this year. And some are fairly onerous. You know the two that I question is the use of the aces, which is a medical design tool that aces is aware, has said not to use in public settings other than medical. And so I just kind of question that and would wonder if we can request not to use that? And then the requirement for the two assessments and there was a wonderful tool recommended, but it's quite difficult to get the training and very time intensive. Would the class tool be a substitute for that? So, I'm not currently collect– I have a wonderful consultant and meets everything else except those two things. So, we don't get that adjustment and I just love to talk with someone, number one, about the appropriate of those two as well as possible ways to get around it.
Allen Lynch: I know we will have a presentation that goes into a little more depth on the mental health consultation services. Crystal, I don't remember if those items are actually covered in that presentation or not. Are you available to sort of respond to Beth here?
Crystal Devlin, CDE: Sorry I was changing– because and can you hear me?
Beth Reeves-Fortney: I can hear you.
Crystal Devlin: Okay great so I am really sorry. I missed most of that question there and because I was changing my earbuds. My battery is going dead. So, I am so sorry, but it sounded like something around mental health consultation?
Beth Reeves-Fortney: Yeah, two specific things. Page 77, two new requirements. There might be other new ones, but those two requirements noted to be able to take the adjustment your contractor for mental health consult needs to make a twice annual assessment that seemed like a pretty onerous tool, unless we could use the class tool which we have access to. And then the use of the aces tool with parents that I personally well, professionally don't feel is appropriate. It's not strength based, and it's really designed for medical use and aces is aware. I contacted them and they said you should not be using it by paraprofessionals.
Crystal Devlin: Okay, so I do know that our policy office will be giving some, you know, additional clarification around mental health consultation as part of their presentation tomorrow morning, but I also would encourage you, Beth, to I believe that's who was speaking to go ahead and reach out to me via email so that I can ensure we get your get you the answers that you need. And I'll put my email in the chat for you.
Beth Reeves-Fortney: Oh, thank you so much.
Crystal Devlin: You're welcome.
Allen Lynch: Great, thank you. Was there anything else, Beth?
Beth Reeves-Fortney: No, I'll have that discussion and look forward to learning more.
Allen Lynch: Sounds great, then I will go ahead and call on Jose Torres. Do you still have a question?
Jose G Torres: Hello!
Allen Lynch: How's it going?
Jose G Torres: Good! Thank you. Thank you so much for the question that you've already answered, but there was one that I asked for previously, when you were covering the best interest and the guidance is said that we can't disenroll families due to excessive absences. So, if that is the new guidance what are we supposed to do with children who aren't coming and have already maximized their BIs?
Allen Lynch: Crystal, I see you unmuting.
Crystal Devlin: Yeah, I can take that. So then, once they've exceeded their best interest and we know there's no limitation on excused absences. Then you're going to start you know, claiming unexcused absences. I understand that it removed– it has been removed from regulation around contractors having a policy for unexcused absences, but abandonment of care has taken its place and that those days of absence would be considered an excused absence. And you know, if the family isn't showing up, isn't calling, I believe it's by day 7, or within that first week you're reaching out to the parent attempting to make contact with them and you continue claiming as unexcused absences up through day 30 that the parent has not been in contact with you. If at day 30, if the parent has not been in contact, then on day 31, you're going to issue that Notice of Action disenrolling the families from CSPP.
Jose G Torres: When you issue that notice is that where the 14 or 19 day start, or is that the last day of service?
Crystal Devlin: Correct, no that is when that it's 14 days if you hand that Notice of Action directly to the parent, which clearly, they're not around. So, it's probably going to be mailed so therefore, you would give them 19 days to appeal the action and you continue to claim unexcused absences during that time during the appeal period.
Jose G Torres: So in a year, right? That is 30 plus 19, that is, 52 days out of 365. That's about 20 percent, if my math is–
Crystal Devlin: Right, and I just want to say that the CDE is very aware that this is an issue for contractors as well as families who are on waiting list, right? We understand that that's an issue. I think this is part of the reason why we continued to have hold harmless for the next couple of years while we try to work through these things. But we do understand, and we are advocating for some type of change to alleviate this burden.
Jose G Torres: Okay, so then hopefully we'll have a response by the time whole harmless closes because it might impact reimbursement up with the 5% flex, correct?
Crystal Devlin: Correct.
Jose G Torres: Okay, thank you so much, Crystal.
Crystal Devlin: You're welcome.
Allen Lynch: Okay, great. Thank you. So next I will call on Shannan, I have you– also have your hand up.
Shannan: Yeah, can you hear me?
Allen Lynch: Yeah, I can hear you.
Shannan: Okay, great. I'm actually– I have my own question, but I'm actually going to tap into Jose’s question a little more for expansion. It's often not the unexcused absence where they stop showing up. It's the intermittent unexcused absences where they literally, you know, they come, and then they're gone for like 3 days. They have no reason why they're gone for 3 days, and then they're back. So, they haven't actually abandoned services. So, I think that needs to be addressed too because we ongoingly are not being paid for those days in normal fiscal years, because the family technically hasn’t abandoned, so we can't terminate them, but they literally are having, you know, 40% of their year unexcused. So it's not really a question but more a concept of the issue is that you know, they're not necessarily abandoning. They're just oh, we, you know, we went out of town. That's technically use of their best interest days, but we, as an agency, are getting penalized because we would have to hold that spot. And again, that's in a normal fiscal year, but I think that has to be looked at as part of the whole, you know, hopefully, revision of some kind. The other question I had was, how long do analysts have to approve EPARs? Because we're going on like 45, 50, 60 days for some of ours, waiting.
Crystal Devlin: So, the state has 30 days to approve or deny a request for equipment purchases. And so, if you're not hearing back from your consultants, or maybe an issue, they may be out of the office for some reason and did not, you know, either process a request before they were, you know, expectantly out of office, or something like that. So please do go ahead and reach out to the administrator for the county and let them know that you're having issues getting this approved and could they please follow up.
Shannan: Reach out to who? I'm sorry.
Crystal Devlin: The education administrators and the education administrators are included on the regional consultant directory on the CDE EED webpage.
Shannan: Okay, perfect. Thank you so much.
Crystal Devlin: You're welcome.
Allen Lynch: Okay, great. I'll move on to Pam Lee. Do you still have a question as well?
Pam Lee: Yes, I do. Can you guys hear me?
Allen Lynch: Yes, I can hear you.
Pam Lee: I just want to clarify what it comes to the definition of the subcontract. I know typically, we have used object. You know this, that sax object code 5100 for subcontracts. Does it also pertain to anything like services that we quote using 5800 object numbers?
Allen Lynch: Let me see if I have someone available to answer that question for you now. Have you placed that question in the Q&A as well?
Pam Lee: Yes, I did, but I didn’t get an answer so–
Allen Lynch: Yeah, we need to wait until we have someone available to actually respond to that question. I know we will be keeping all of the Q&A. Responding to questions as we are able to do so. Definitely provide your email address there as well when you ask that question so that we can make sure you get the response directly as well.
Pam Lee: That's fine. Yeah–
Allen Lynch: Unless there’s anyone else in the program side right now who's able to speak to the subcontracts?
Pam Lee: That’s fine, thank you, I will wait.
Allen Lynch: Okay, next up I have Nancy Cruz. I do want to make sure– I'm probably going to take one or two more questions. We are already running behind on time. I want to make sure we have time for all of our presentations. We also want to give you guys a short break. So, I'm going to take like the next two and then if you have already put your, if you've not already put your question in the Q&A, please go ahead and do so. But I'm just going to take these next couple. So, Nancy Cruz, if you're available, if you still have a question?
Nancy Cruz: Yes, it is related to the abandonment of care and the unexcused. I know you guys clarified that, but I'm just double clarifying, because I just attended the ECC conference and was told differently regarding the unexcused, that we're no longer able to use it, because I know on MB 21-03 it said that we are no longer allowed to create our own policies for unexcused. So just to clarify, we can still use unexcused? We can have them on our absence policy and have it included in our parent handbook, correct?
Crystal Devlin: So, let's clarify on that. You do not have an unexcused absence policy. Okay, you have an abandonment of care policy and that needs to be provided in your written information to families. What the abandonment of care policy is, and that's specified in– I can't remember the management bulletin off the top of my head, but that information needs to be provided in writing to families. And that is when you would claim unexcused absences. Does that help?
Nancy Cruz: Yes, I understand that, but as someone else just said, when a parent is absent here and there, where it's not necessarily abandonment of care to where they just show up the next day and say, I don't want to give you the reason, or it's personal. Can we use unexcused in those situations?
Crystal Devlin: So, I think we'd need somebody from fiscal to answer how they would claim those days and I do believe it would still be unexcused. But there's not a policy, you're right, Nancy.
Allen Lynch: Yeah, so you can still have days reported as unexcused absences on your source documentation, which we'll go over in a later presentation as well. So, you would still mark those days as unexcused if there is not a reason that's a part of your excused absence policy.
Nancy Cruz: Thank you so much.
Crystal Devlin: Let me add here as well that you can't have a– you're going to have unexcused absences, correct? But you are not going to have a policy that disenrolls a family for say, we used to see five unexcused absences. The family was disenrolled. That's the policy you're not going to have around unexcused absences.
Nancy Cruz: I understand, thank you. Thank you so much.
Allen Lynch: Great, thank you. So, I'm going to take one more question before we go to a short five-minute break. Next on my list was aalvarez23. Are you still available and have a question?
aalvarez23: I do so I would like to please piggyback on the absence question. So how do we report or excuse families who tell us that they need to leave the country to care for extended family, grandparents that are ill? And that's going to take three, four weeks up to six weeks sometimes because they're going to the other side of the world at times and they need enough time to take care of those situations so we have some of those so that's one question. The second question is, I would like to please get some resources to look up more information on the indirect costs and having to do with administrative, how you break down those costs and break it down, identify as administrative and so forth? So those are my two questions.
Allen Lynch: Crystal, do you have a response to the first portion of that with the extended absence?
Crystal Devlin: That's a unique one to me. I haven't had that question before, and I think that we would need to take that back. I think it might be able to be considered a family emergency, but I think we would want to take that back and possibly develop an FAQ around that to our web page.
aalvarez23: Thank you.
Allen Lynch: And then for the second portion of that question, if you want to provide your email in the Q&A along with that question, we can try and get you some resources or get someone in touch with you who can provide those resources for you.
aalvarez23: Will do. Thank you so much.
Allen Lynch: Great, thank you. Okay, we are running behind at this point in time. So, I think we're going to have to go a little short on the questions here. Let's take a five-minute break and then we will come back with our next presentation. If your question has not already been put into the Q&A please go ahead and do put it there. Provide as much information as you can and also your email. We will try and get back to you as soon as we are able to do so. And let's take a short five-minute break here everybody, thank you.
Allen Lynch: Okay, we are going to go ahead and start getting ready for our next presentation. So up next, we have Jacob Lee and Kuiana Slaughter. Jake, I will let you go ahead and take over.
Jacob Lee: Hi, everyone. My name is Jacob Lee and I'm an analyst here in the Early Education and Nutrition Fiscal Services unit. I'm joined by my colleague, Kuiana Slaughter, and we're going to be doing an overview of the California Preschool Accounting Reporting and Information System otherwise known as CPARIS. So, let's get right into that.
Jacob Lee: So, what is CPARIS? CPARIS is the– is a web-based application built by us. It functions as a hub of information that contractors previously needed to contact their fiscal analyst in order to access. It's going to have five primary functions that you're going to use. The first one's going to be checking your payment status and the details of the payments. You'll be able to submit requests for a transfer of funds between contracts. You'll be able to submit an attempt to establish or request to close a reserve account. You'll also submit your monthly or quarterly Enrollment, Attendance and Fiscal reports depending on what you're required to do and then you'll also be able to access your calculation sheets and letters for those submitted reports.
Alright so this is going to be what the CPARIS homepage is going to look like. You're going to see your latest payment details. So, your last payment, the amount, and then what contract it went to and you'll also be able to see the announcements there to the right. These are just the most recent announcements that we've put out to contractors, and this is all going to be located at the link here. It's going to be https://cparis.cde.ca.gov/cparis/logon.aspx. Alright, next slide.
Alright, so the first tab you're going to be able to navigate to is the Payments tab. The Payments tab will take you to payments by invoice. You'll be able to view individual payment details such as the total payment amount as well as the payment status. The payment date, if applicable and the department from which the payment originated. Then further down you'll see the breakdown of each total payment by agreement and as well as the PCA.
Next, you'll be able to navigate to the Agreements tab. On this tab, you'll find the following, you'll find the payments by agreement options here you'll be able to view payment details for each agreement year your agency administers. And then the next one will be the transfer request for funding. During transfer periods this is where you can request various transfer opportunities. Those will be gone over later in a different presentation. Then you'll see the establishing the reserve account option and then next you'll see the reserve account close request and that's it for this tab.
Then we see– we get into the Reporting tab. This will allow you to access the reports that are required to be submitted on a monthly or quarterly basis again, that's dependent on what you're required to do. First, you'll see the current forms. This will show the open report forms that your agency is required to complete. Then you'll see all report forms which will show all your agencies open report forms regardless of requirements. Then the Certification Preview tab. This allows a report certifier to review the data being submitted before certifying that it is correct. Then you'll see the Certified Data tab. This is used to certify the forms that have been saved with complete data. Lastly, you'll see the Certified Reports tab, and this will show the most up to date certified data for each report form.
I’m going to talk a little bit more about the Certified Reports tab specifically. Certified reports are reviewed by your fiscal analyst and then approved. The certified report section is where contractors will go to view the approved calculation worksheets and letter generated from that certified report and you can get– you can access any of those given calculation sheets or letters by clicking on the links here in the earnings calculation column. This is– this was previously sent to you to your agency by your fiscal analyst via email, but starting your fiscal year 2022–23, we made it available on CPARIS for your agency and that'll be able to be viewed here. Before I hand it over to Kuiana, or I guess I'll just hand it over to her. We'll do questions after so, Kuiana.
Kuiana Slaughter: Thank you, Jacob. For those who missed my initial introduction, my name is Kuiana Slaughter and I'm a fiscal analyst with the EENFS unit. So, I'll go ahead and get right into it. Most of you are probably already familiar with the Centralized Authentication System or CAS. CAS is a separate website from CPARIS. CDE requires the use of CAS when becoming a user of any CDE established system. This is where new users of CPARIS must register their username and password. You cannot be added as a user of CPARIS until you've registered in CAS. I’m sorry. Now, CAS is where you would go if you need to update your password as well as if you if you have forgotten your password and need to reset it. If you need to update user information such as your email address, CAS is also where you will go. Note that because CAS is separate from CPARIS, CPARIS is not aware of the existence of a username until it is added as a user of CPARIS. I'll go over more– I'll go over this more detail in the next few slides. Next slide, please.
Okay, so once you have registered a username in CAS, you must be added as a user in CPARIS before you can access the system. The CPARIS users must be assigned at least one user role. A user role tells the system which functions a user may have access to. There are currently four user roles. First, you have the Agency Admin. These users are the primary administrators or managing CPARIS users at an agency. Although Agency Admin users have view only rights to a payment and report data, an agency admin user can add new users, deactivate users no longer with the agency and add or remove user roles for existing users. Agency Admins are the only users who can view the User Management tab, which is where they would go to perform these functions. Then you have the Authorized Representatives. These users can view payment information, enter report data and they are the only users allowed to certify a report as accurate and complete thereby submitting it to CDE. Then we have the Data Entry Representative. These users can view payment information and are also allowed to create Enrollment, Attendance and Fiscal reports. They can enter data into all sections of the report. However, they cannot certify the report. And then, finally, you have the Agency Staff. These users can view payment information and report data, but they cannot enter data or certify reports.
So at least one Agency Admin user is required but more than one is highly encouraged. A user in CPARIS can have more than one user role assigned. For example, an Agency Admin user can also be an Authorized Representative, but the requirement is that at least one user role is assigned to each user. When new users are added or re-activated, if they have already existed, the default user role is Agency Staff. So, keep in mind that if you accidentally deactivate a user and reactivate them, you will need to add user roles again. Also know that when new user– new roles are added to a user who is currently logged in, they will be required to log out and back in before they can access the new rights. For example, if the Agency Admin user role is added to a user who is currently only an Authorized Representative, that user will not see the User Management tab until they log out and back in.
So, the User Management tab is where agencies can grant access to new users as well as change the roles for individual already established users. So only users identified as the Agency Admin users will be able to edit information on this tab. As shown on the slide, Jacob Lee is the user, identified roles are Agency admin and Authorized Representative and Jacob's role or any other users can be modified by clicking on a username. In this example, jalee and then rows determine which permissions each user has access to. To add a new user, the Agency Admin user would add new users to your agency by typing their username into the add a user box on the right.
Once the Agency Admin user has searched for the new username and has successfully added the user, a new screen will appear. As I mentioned earlier, the default user role when new users are added or when users are reactivated is the view only Agency Staff. Clicking save on this screen without selecting any other user role will mean that this user will have view only rights. Agency Admin will designate the appropriate user roles by checking the active box next to the user role. Remember, the user rows are Agency Admin, Agency Staff, Data Entry Representative and Authorized Representative. We just covered the different user roles in a previous slide but note that the Agency Admin will also find a description of the roles of each user type at this approval step under the description column. If you wish to make this user a Data Entry Representative for example, check in the Data Representative box and click in the save button will activate the user role. Remember, if you add a role to a user currently logged in to CPARIS, they will need to log out of the system and back in before they can see the new rights.
So, information about CPARIS can be found on our EENFS website at https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/aa/cd/. Included at this link– website are the link to access CPARIS, the link to download the CPARIS user manual and the link to CPARIS FAQs. Of course, you can always reach out to your assigned fiscal analyst if you have any questions navigating CPARIS.
At this time, we can take questions.
Allen Lynch: Thank you, Jacob and Kuiana. I think we are actually going to in the interest of time forgo questions at this point, but we do have one more presentation to get through and I do know we were hoping to end around noon. I think we might be running just a little bit over. So, if you do have questions, please put them in the Q&A and we will try and get to as many questions as we possibly can. We will also be creating FAQs based on the questions we receive but I think we're going to go ahead and try and move into our next presentation. So, if we move forward to that, that'd be great.
Okay, Crystal, I believe this is your presentation.
Crystal Devlin: Yeah, so we probably will go a little bit over noon, everybody. I'm hoping that you can stay here with us while we get through this this final presentation for today. As Allen said, please do continue to put your questions in the Q&A. We will be having folks from our PQI team and fiscal team and policy team answering those questions as they come in and we will take back those really frequently asked questions and get them posted for you in the near future. So again, my name is Crystal. Oh back, please. Oh, that's okay. My name is Crystal Devlin. I'm an Education Administrator in the Early Education Division, Program Quality Implementation office. I will be presenting on the Prior Written Approvals for State Preschool Program Contractors and then our, my colleague, Carly, will be reporting on– presenting on Data Reporting Requirements for CSPP contractors. Okay, next slide.
Our agenda for prior written approval requirements. First, we're going to look at those changes to minimum days of operation also known as your MDO and what's required there, your program narrative change in your calendar and we'll also cover some programmatic changes where you need that program narrative change and supporting documentation.
We'll also look at the prior written approval requirements for equipment purchase approval requests and the subcontracts requirements and approvals, and then I'll hand it over to Carly to talk about data reporting requirements for the Child Development Management Information System also known as CDMIS and the Preschool Language Information System, PLIS.
Okay, let's move on in to prior written approval requirements. So, minimum days of operation for a CSPP contract requirement is for a full-day full-year program 246 days and for a part-day part-year program 175 to 180 days, unless there is a lesser amount of days approved by your consultant, or through the original request for application process.
Let's talk a little bit about when you submit a program narrative change and a revised program calendar request, or calendar to request a change to your minimum days of operation. So, you need to do this anytime there's an increase or a reduction to the MDO that has previously been approved for the program year. For instance, we know that a lot of programs submitted their fiscal year 2023-24 continued funding application, submitted with that a– their planned calendar and it changed, right? So, then we need to have that program narrative change along with that revised calendar. This also includes and this question was actually coming up a lot in the Q&A for your optional staff training days where you can find out more about that in management bulletin 19-05, implementing optional staff training days. And this is up to two days per contract period. So, for your optional staff training days, you will also submit that program narrative change, a revised calendar showing those as days of closure. However, your consultant will process internal paperwork that will be handed over to your fiscal analyst to make sure that you get paid for those two days of closure as if you were operating. Next slide.
So, program narrative change request for programmatic changes may include, you want to go from part-day part-year to full-day full-year or full-day full-year to part-day part-year. You might want to add a site, delete a site, change your hours of operation or other things. So, I want to, you know, really emphasize here with the like– if you're asking to go from full-day full-year to part-day part-year state preschool program, we're going to want to see a lot of documentation, right? We want a justification of why you're moving from full-day full-year to part-day part-year. We want to see that you've done some sort of needs assessment within your community to make sure that you're still meeting the needs of the children and families within your community and then for adding a site we also want you to send along with that program narrative change, a facility license. And I also want to really stress the importance of whenever you're submitting either a program narrative change request or as we move along an equipment purchase approval request that you provide all required documentation in that initial request because the CDE has 30 days to approve your request, right? And if you haven't submitted everything, then we're going back and forth and it's going to be longer and longer. That 30 days is from the date that the consultant and the CDE has all of the required documentation necessary to approve your request, okay? And then also for changes of hours of operation, if you're wanting to reduce your hours of operation in your full-day full-year program, here's where you're really going to need another, you know, we need to see that your families don't need those extended hours. So, say you're currently operating from 7 A.M. to 6 P.M. and your families are all attending from 7 A.M. to 5 P.M. If you can justify that and show us evidence of that, you're more likely to be approved for such a change. Next slide.
Okay, now looking at those requests for approval to purchase equipment and for renovations and repairs. These approval requests need to be submitted on the Equipment Purchase Approval Request form also known as the EPAR. And I did put a link in the chat to that for you all just a little bit ago. If they're applicable need to be attached to that EPAR when you submit to the CDE for approval and we also need you to attach a justification letter, including any cost allocations if applicable when you're submitting that to us for approval. One copy of that request is going to be retained by the Department of Education, and one copy will be returned to the contractor, either approved or disapproved within 30 calendar days of receipt of all required documentation. Next slide.
Okay, all equipment and equipment replacement purchases that meet either of the following criteria shall be approved in writing in advance by the CDE. So, when the per-unit acquisition cost equals or exceeds the lesser of the capitalization level established by the contractor for financial statement purposes, or $5,000, including tax. So, for CDE it's $5,000, however, and we've seen this come up quite a bit over the past few years where contractors have an established capitalization level that is lesser than $5,000. So, we've seen some as low as $500. It's really important that you're aware of what your board has set as the capitalization level and that if it's less than that $5,000 that you are getting that prior written approval from your– from CDE. And then the sum of all items included in a purchase equals $10,000 or more, including tax. I also want to– but we'll look at it I may– it may be on the next slide. Go ahead.
Okay, all expenses associated with the purchase that are necessary for the equipment to perform its intended purpose, prior to the cost allocation, should be included in determining if prior approval is required. So quite frequently what we see is we have contractors who hold a contract with the Department of Education, a CSPP contract and they may have a CCTR contract with Department of Social Services, or maybe even a Head Start grant and the equipment is going to be used by both the state preschool program and the other contract. So, in those cases I– we want, even if the what you're going to build to the state preschool program contract is less than that $5,000 or your set capitalization of– for your agency. We still need to see the or receive and approve that equipment purchase approval request. So, it's $5,000, $2,500 is being billed to CSPP, $2,500 is being billed to CCTR or whatever your cost allocation is, you still need to submit that request and have it approved in writing and in your justification letter you're going to include what you're allocating to each contract and then subdividing equipment purchases into separate items to avoid that pre-approval requirement is prohibited.
So similarly, with your proposed renovation repair work for $10,000 or more prior to cost allocation, including the invoice costs plus any applicable sales tax, delivery fees, or installation charges shall be approved in writing in advance by the Department of Education. Again, all expenses associated with the purchase that are necessary for the improvement to perform its intended purpose, prior to that cost allocation should be included in determining if prior approval is required. Subdividing renovation and repair work into separate purchases to avoid the pre-approval requirement is prohibited. So, for instance here, quite frequently we see a request for playground equipment and part of that purchase also includes poured rubberized service and that would all need to be included in as one package, right? You're not going to subdivide those things in order to avoid the pre-approval or bidding process. Next slide.
Okay, so let's talk about the requirements for obtaining bids and this is for our private agencies. Those are our community-based organizations, our private nonprofits or private for profits and so on and so forth. So, all equipment purchases, replacements, and improvements not performed by your own staff that exceed $5,000, including tax, must have at least three bids or estimates. Each bid or estimate must contain prices for equivalent and comparable items and or services. When available, consolidating procurements to obtain a more economical purchase is required and again, subdividing equipment for competitive bidding requirement is prohibited. Next slide.
If birds or estimates are required, you need to purchase the goods or services from the lowest responsible bidder or estimator and if those three bids or estimates cannot be obtained, you need to provide us with adequate documentation of the reasons why those three bids or estimates could not be obtained. So, you have an emergency situation, right? You had a water pipe bust and there's water going all over the place and you need to get that taken care of immediately. We definitely want you to call up a plumber and get that fixed right away and this may preclude even being able to get that prior written approval, right? The requirement is that you get that prior written approval, but you have an emergency situation. We certainly don't want your whole building to flood. So, email your consultant, get that plumber out there and get it fixed. Or sometimes that item is only available from a single source. So, if you– if that's the case, you're going to include that in your justification letter and then lease purchase agreements are subject to all of the same requirements for bidding and prior written approvals.
And then we have the requirements for obtaining bids for our public agencies. Our public agencies are local educational agencies which are our school districts, our county offices of education, a community college district, or direct funded charter schools directly funded by the CDE. And these agencies must comply with Public Contract Code or the PCC.
Okay, let's talk a little bit about subcontracts and requirements for approvals there. In general, a subcontract is any agreement or contract that an agency enters into to provide a good or service to support their CSPP. Next slide.
So excluded as a subcontract relationship are all of the following: employment, agreements, facility rent or lease agreements, payment arrangements with family child care homes and or providers. And I want to note here that this is only if you are approved to provide CSPP services through a family child care home education network. This could also include, or also excluded from that subcontract relationship is medical or dental service agreements, bookkeeping and auditing agreements, except for agreements exceeding $5,000, food services agreements, janitorial and groundskeeping agreements. A subcontract with a public agency such as the local education agency or subcontracts with an individual for less than $10,000, except that you must still follow the bidding requirements for subcontracts. So, a subcontract would say, an individual, private consultant, and it's less than $10,000. You don't need prior approval for that subcontract, but you would still have to complete the bidding process. And that will be, you know, reviewed as part of your audit, your annual fiscal audit. So, making sure that you're getting those bids for any of those types of subcontracts.
Required subcontract provisions include that every subcontract must be in writing and specify all the requirements that are set forth in the Contract Terms and Conditions of the state preschool program contract and you can find all of the requirements around subcontracting on pages 42 to 44 of the Contract Terms and Conditions and I'll ask that somebody from our PQI office team please drop the link to the 2023-24 CT&C in the chat.
Our private agency bids for subcontract requirements include that private contractors obtain at least three bids or estimates for subcontracts exceeding $5,000 prior again to that cost allocation and then the subcontract needs to be awarded to that lowest responsible bidder and the contractor shall not split those subcontracts to avoid the competitive bidding process requirements.
Okay, if those three bids or estimates cannot be obtained, you need to maintain documents in your records that establish the reasons those three bids or estimates could not be obtained and the reasonableness of the proposed expenditure, without three bids or estimates. And then documentation for any single source vendor or service provider, including the reason that the vendor should be approved and that needs to be submitted in for approval in lieu of those three bids.
And then, similarly to our public agency, equipment purchase approval requests for subcontract, and again, public agency applies to our local educational agencies, including our school districts, county offices of education, community college districts, and direct funded charter schools. And again, that these agencies need to award subcontracts in accordance with the public contractor.
Then, the prior written approval requirements for subcontracts includes that you obtain that prior written approval from CDE for subcontracts at $10,000 or more prior to that cost allocation.
Alright, finally what do you submit for approval of the subcontracts? Prior to execution of a subcontract and commencement of the work, you need to submit to your assigned program quality implementation office, regional consultant, a letter on agency letterhead detailing the request for approval to subcontract. Two copies of the proposed subcontracts, including a proposed line-item budget which shows the cost of the services to be performed. Those bids, if they're applicable, also need to be submitted when requesting approval, and if those three bids were not obtained, you need to provide written justification when that subcontract request is submitted to us for prior approval. I really again, want to emphasize how important it is that all your documentation is included at the time you submit the original request so that we can process those approvals in a timely manner, okay? And then you also need to demonstrate that approval of the subcontract is cost effective to the state.
Our private agencies capital outlays subcontract approvals, you need to include documents showing that the bidder selected by the contractor has obtained a payment bond in an amount not less than one half the amount of the proposed subcontract.
And then for transportation services, subcontract approvals request for those approvals for transportation services shall also include a certificate of the insurance of the subcontractor in an amount not less than one million dollars per occurrence, or a greater amount, if required by the Public Utility Utilities Commission Regulations, listing you the contractor and the CDE as additional named insured.
So, CDE approval or denial of subcontractor approval request. What will happen is, one copy of the subcontract is going to be retained by the Department of Education and the other copy is going to be returned to the contractor, approved, or disapproved within 30 calendar days, oversee of all required documents. No reimbursement shall be made to the contractor or subcontractor for work performed prior to the CDE approval and a disapproved subcontract will include a statement of the reasons for disapproval. You can appeal a decision in accordance with this instruction specified in the Contract Terms and Conditions section, Appeals and Termination Contract Administration Disputes if your subcontract is denied or partially denied.
Some really important reminders for subcontracting is that the CDE does not assume any responsibility for performance of approved subcontracts, nor does the CDE assume responsibility for any unpaid debt of the contractor resulting from subcontracting liens. No subcontracts shall in any way relieve the contractor of any responsibility for performance under the CSPP contract and the CSPP contractors are responsible for ensuring financial and compliance audits of all subcontractors.
Okay, this is around the audit of subcontracts for CSPP services, and this is the one we see most frequently. This is where the contractor is subcontracting with another child care and development early education program to provide the CSPP services on behalf of the CSPP contractor. And so, when the CSPP contractor is approved by the CDE to enter into a subcontract with that other entity to provide those CSPP services for children and families. The CSPP contractor is required to have an independent audit conducted of that subcontractor and submit the completed audit to the CDE as follows. So our LEAS, or local educational agencies shall submit the audit of the subcontract by the fifteenth day of the fifth month following the fiscal year in which the subcontracted services were performed. So, an example is our fiscal year ended on June 30, 2023. That audit of the subcontractor is due to the CDE on or before November 15, 2023, and then all other contractors are private contractors, shall submit the subcontract audit along with their own audit as specified in the California Code of Regulations, Title 5 Section 17823. I also want to really emphasize for folks that are subcontracting services and have another entity providing those CSPP services for families that ultimately the CSPP contract or the one that holds the contract is ultimately responsible for the services that are provided to children and families. So, it's really imperative that you are checking in on a regular basis that you are, you know, doing some assessment of the subcontractor to make sure that they're following the Contract Terms and Conditions of the state preschool program contract because you, the contractor, ultimately would be held responsible if they're not meeting those requirements. So just keep that in mind. Make sure you're doing some, you know, checking in, coming in, taking a tour of the environment, maybe conducting that environment rating scale. If that subcontractor is completing the enrollment for families that you're doing an audit of their family data files to ensure they're accurately enrolling and certifying families for eligibility and need if applicable. Okay, next slide please.
There we go, now I'm going to hand it over to Carly to discuss data reporting requirements for state preschool program contractors. Thanks, everybody.
Carly Nodohara: Yup, thank you so much Crystal. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Carly Nodohara and I am an education programs consultant in the Applied Data Research and Evaluation office, also part of the Early Education Division. Thank you so much for sticking by us as we kind of bleed into your lunch. So, I'll try to go over this thoroughly but quickly. I'll be providing a brief overview today on the Early Education data systems where all CSPP contractors are required to submit reports. These systems are the Child Development Management Information System, or the CDMIS and the Preschool Language Information System, or the PLIS. And although we won't be getting too deep into these systems today, please keep in mind that the support teams for the CDMIS and PLIS do hold webinar trainings fairly frequently. Information about these trainings are shared through the Early Education email distribution list. If you are not subscribed to this already, and you are interested in doing so, please do. I'm going to drop the link for the webpage in the chat right now. And so there is a separate list for executive directors, for program directors, and then one on overall program information and I would highly suggest at least subscribing to the program information list if you're interested in receiving information from the Early Education Division. Next slide, please.
So, to review the CDMIS first. The CDMIS is the system where the CDD-801A, 801-B, and the Subsidized Provider Report are submitted. This is also the system in which agency information is retained and can be updated. Updates to the following can be made through the CDMIS, so changes to the agency executive or program director, site or office updates, including licensing information, new sites, sites that need to be deleted, site supervisor information or change of site address, operating hours, and also you can add family child care home information to serve children on a specific contract. You are also able to upload documentation pertinent to these changes via the update agency information section in the CDMIS. However, I do want to share there are specific caveats to this update information. Although you can request for an update or change to be made in the CDMIS, final approval is made by your assigned PQI consultant. So proper protocol for changes would be to communicate with your PQI consultant of the changes and provide the proper documentation needed for the update. Once your PQI consultant has been notified, you may request the change via the CDMIS and then notify your consultant that the request has been submitted. After your PQI consultant approves of the change, it will then be reflected in the CDMIS. Next slide, please.
In addition to retaining an agency’s information, the main purpose of the CDMIS is for report submission. The CDD-801A report is a monthly child care population report that all CSPP contractors must submit every month. It contains information on the child, family and setting of all children in your agency. These reports can be submitted either manually by web input edit or by uploading an electronic file that follows the specific CDMIS 801A file format specifications. The 801A report is typically due on the twentieth of the month following the end of the report period, or the business day following the twentieth if it falls on the weekend or holiday. For example, the October 2023 801A reporting period opened on November 1, 2023, and will be due on November 20, 2023. If the CDE has not received any data in your agency's 801A report by the due date, we will send a late notification on the day following the due date to your agency's executive and program director to remind you of the missed due date and outstanding report. You will then have until the end of the month to submit your 801A report and if your report continues to be outstanding by the end of the month, your agency will have your contract apportionments withheld until the report is received. Next slide please, thank you.
In addition to the 801A report, the CDMIS is also the system in which the Subsidized Provider Report or the SPR is submitted. The SPR is a monthly report for all agencies who administer their CSPP contracts through a family child care home provider. These providers may be licensed or license exempt. Please keep in mind that your agency must be approved by your assigned PQI consultant prior to serving children in a family child care home and submitting the Subsidized Provider Report. There are currently only a handful of agencies that serve CSPP children in a family child care home setting and thus submit the SPR. If you are unsure if this applies to you, feel free to email either your PQI consultant or send an email to CDMIS@cde.ca.gov. I'll drop that in the chat right here. Yep, and then the support team can help identify whether or not you currently have any family child care homes. So next slide, please.
So, unlike the 801A report, the SPR can only be submitted by uploading an electronic file to the CDMIS in a specific file format. The SPR contains information of all family child care home providers that serve children in a family child care home setting under one of your contracts. This information is then shared with the Child Care Providers Union, the CCPU on a monthly basis and so more important resources for the CDMIS can be found at https://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/cd/ci/main.asp and I'm going to drop that here too. Next slide, please.
So now I'll provide a high-level overview of the Preschool Language Information System or the PLIS. The PLIS was launched almost a year ago in response to Education Code 8241.5 and collects information on language characteristics of CSPP children, teachers, and classrooms. This report, called the PLIS report also includes information from the family language instrument which may designate a child as a dual language learner or DLL. The PLIS report is required for all CSPP contractors on all CSPP children enrolled in CSPP for at least one day during the reporting quarter for both DLL children and non-DLL children, and for both part-day and full-day children. This should also include both newly enrolled and children that are continuing to be enrolled. Like the 801A, the PLIS report can either be submitted manually by inputting report information on the online form for each CSPP child, or it can be submitted through an electronic file following the PLIS report file format specifications. Additionally, if a lot of your children reported on a previous quarter are continuing to be in your program and would be on your current report, there is an option to download a previous report and reupload that data so that you don't have to redo the entire report. You would still need to make any necessary changes. For example, if there were children that disenrolled or new children that have enrolled in the current quarter to properly reflect the quarter, but this option can make reporting that much easier. Next slide, please.
So, unlike the 801A report that is submitted monthly, the PLIS report is submitted on a quarterly basis. Currently the open PLIS report submission period is for quarter one of the current fiscal year. The quarter one report includes information on CSPP children enrolled in your agency from July 1 through September 30, 2023. Again, this includes both newly enrolled children and children continuing to be enrolled. The quarter one report due date was extended from October 20 to October 31, 2023. We sent the late notice out to executive directors, program directors, and active PLIS users on November 1, for agencies that fail to submit any PLIS report information and our plan is to withhold apportionments from contractors who have not submitted any PLIS quarter-one data as of November 15. The submission period for updating your data for accuracy will remain open until December 31, 2023, so please ensure your PLIS report is fully accurate by this date. On January 1, 2024, the quarter one report will be locked and no further changes to data will be able to be made. So, important PLIS resources can be found at https://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/cd/ci/plissupportlanding.asp and I will drop that here in the chat. Okay, so in addition to the web page, the PLIS support team can be reached at PLIS@cde.ca.gov and we are always happy to assist and support you with your reporting. So, the PLIS support team and the CDMIS team, although a lot of the same members on both teams and they both know so much about the PLIS/CDMIS, I just want to make sure that you're keeping your email separate so that we're able to help you with whichever report and system that you have questions on. Adding the email address in chat right now. Okay, so I'm going to turn it back over to Crystal to close out this session. Thank you so much and sorry for being so quick.
Crystal Devlin: Alright, thank you everybody. Do apologize for having to rush through that. Just want to let you know that the Program Quality Implementation office will be providing the future webinar on the prior written approval requirements so stay tuned for that. We'll be able to be a little bit more thorough, but we do have resources available for you. I did drop the link to the CSPP Contract Terms and Conditions in the chat for you, but those are available at ctc2324.docx. And then, if you're not sure, I know we have a whole lot of brand-new program directors out there with all the staff turnover that we've had. If you do not know who your assigned Program Quality Implementation office regional consultant is you can access that directory at https://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/cd/ci/assignments.asp and I just like to thank you all for your continued support and being there every day for our children and families. We truly appreciate you and value each and every one of you. Have a great rest of your day and I'll turn it over to Allen, I believe.
Allen Lynch: Great! Thank you, Crystal. That does conclude the day one of this training. We will be back tomorrow morning again at 9 A.M. You should have another link for that in your email. We will be taking the questions in the Q&A back and hopefully creating some FAQs for some of the more commonly asked questions. Feel free to continue to put your questions in there. As we prepare to close out, we'll give you just a couple of minutes to do that. Make sure you include your email information or your contact so we can reach out to you about specifics or get you in touch with the right people. Thank you all so much. Enjoy the rest of your week. See you tomorrow.