HURRICANE
KATRINA INFORMATION-ELECTRONIC ANNOUNCEMENT # 5
(9/16/05)
From: Sally L. Stroup,
Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education
Theresa S. Shaw, Chief Operating Officer, Federal Student Aid
Subject: Verification,
Dependency Overrides, and Professional Judgment
Verification
Students Impacted by Hurricane
Katrina: The Secretary will not enforce the verification requirements of the
regulations for the 2005-06 award year for any student an institution determines
is unable to provide requested verification information because of the impact
of Hurricane Katrina. An institution must document when it does not complete
verification for this reason, and should use Verification Status Code "S"
when reporting a Federal Pell Grant award to the Common Origination and Disbursement
(COD) System.
- Records Lost, Destroyed,
or Unobtainable: As a result of Hurricane Katrina, some students who have
been selected for verification of their financial aid application, either
by the U.S. Department of Education (Department) or by the institution using
its own verification policy, may not be able to submit required verification
documents. Consistent with guidance we previously provided (see Dear Colleague
Letter GEN-04-04
on Information for Financial Aid Professionals [IFAP]), the Secretary will
not enforce the verification requirements during the 2005-06 award year for
students whose records were lost, destroyed, rendered illegible, or are otherwise
unobtainable as a result of the impact of Hurricane Katrina.
- Transfer Students: For
the 2005-06 award year, as Institutional Student Information Records (ISIRs)
are obtained for students who transfer to an institution as a result of the
impact of Hurricane Katrina (see Electronic
Announcement # 3 on IFAP), institutions will find that some have been
selected for verification. Institutions may ignore this selection for these
students.
Nothing in this guidance
prohibits an institution from performing verification if it has reason to believe
that information on the ISIR is incorrect.
Dependency Overrides
An institution enrolling
a transferring student as a result of Hurricane Katrina who received a dependency
override determination may, but is not required to, use the previous institution's
dependency override determination to process the student's application. An institution
may determine if a dependency override was made by the previous institution
if a value of '1' is in the Dependency Override Indicator field of the 2005-06
ISIR (field #107, position 526). Before using an ISIR that was the result of
the previous institution's dependency override, the enrolling institution should
obtain a signed statement from the student that briefly describes the circumstances
that supported the previous institution's override determination. The institution
must document in the student's file that it used the Dependency Override Indicator
and the student's certification as the basis for processing the student's application
as independent.
Professional Judgment
Section 479A of the Higher
Education Act of 1965, as amended, specifically gives the financial aid administrator
the authority to use professional judgment to make adjustments to a student's
cost of attendance or to the values of the items used in calculating the Expected
Family Contribution (EFC) to reflect the student's special circumstances. Consistent
with guidance we previously provided (see Dear Colleague Letter GEN-04-04
on IFAP), the Secretary strongly encourages institutions to consider using professional
judgment in order to reflect more accurately the financial need of students
and families affected by a disaster.
Because of the severity of the impact of Hurricane Katrina on many students
and families, we want to reiterate our encouragement that institutions use their
authority to make appropriate case-by-case professional judgment decisions when
needed. Also, we want to remind institutions that any request for documentation
from students and families should be made based upon a realistic assessment
of the availability of a family's records as well as other critical concerns
that the family may be dealing with as a result of the hurricane.
In exercising professional
judgment, institutions must make their own determinations and not rely on determinations
of the previous institution.
We expect, in a future
announcement, to provide more information on the use of professional judgment
by Financial Aid Administrators during this emergency, including guidelines
on appropriate adjustments to cost of attendance.
