It's 471 season

The window for E-Rate Form 471 opened on Monday, January 9, 2012 and will close at 11:59 pm EDT (9:59 pm MDT) on Tuesday, March 20, 2012. That makes Tuesday, February 21, 2012 is the last day to post an FCC Form 470 to the USAC website. Here are some links to useful sites for completing your 471:

• OPI School lunch data - I'm not going to be doing spreadsheets of calculations of school lunch data anymore.  OPI has these already calculated by district.  Just select District from the Report Level dropdown box.  Then go to your county and choose the district you want to use.  It should be the district in which your library is physically located.  Some of you will have a choice between the elementary and high school districts.  You can use the one that is most advantageous to your library.  I would highly recommend that you print a copy of the web page with the data you use.  This will be helpful in case of PIA review and/or audit.
• FSCS Numbers - The 471 asks for your library's FSCS number.  You can locate it with a search from the NCES page.  You'll see that there are two different options for each library - system and main building.  Choose the one with the green building next to it.  The FSCS number will begin with MT and probably end with 002 for main libraries.  Branches will end with higher numbers.
• FCC Registration Number - If your library already has an FCC Registration Number but you're not sure where it is, you can do a search for it here.  If you don't have one and need to apply for one, you can also do that here.
• E-Rate Webinar Archives - If you're new to the E-Rate program or if you feel like a refresher on the basic forms would be helpful, you might want to take advantage of the recent E-Rate webinars created for the BTOP program.  They run 1 - 1 1/2 hours.