The "E-Rate" (Education Rate) is the name commonly used to describe the Universal Service Fund for Schools and Libraries program. In turn, the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) established the SLD (Schools and Libraries Division) to administer this federal program. A major overhaul of the Communications Act of 1934, amended in 1996, provided the statutory basis for the enactment of this federal funding source.

The intent of this program is to provide deeply discounted services for Internet access, telecommunications, and local area network installations, known as internal connections. The amount of the discount ranges from 20% to 90%, based on each individual school's free and reduced lunch level of participation. The E-Rate discount average for M-DCPS is currently at 78%. Program "years" run concurrent with school calendar years. At his time, we are in E-Rate Year 5. The law does stipulate, however, that schools must demonstrate maintenance of effort. Thus, ineligible services, such as terminals and workstation computers and printers, software, electrical capacity, among others, must be budgeted in sufficient quantities to justify the infrastructure upgrade requested through this program.

http://www.edc.org/LNT/

http://www.fcc.gov/learnnet/

http://www.fundsforlearning.com

http://www.nctp.com/

http://www.nsba.org/sbot/toolkit/index.html

http://www.netday.org/

http://www.sl.universalservice.org/

http://techcorps.org/

http://www.ed.gov/Technology