With the Mandated Services Aid deadline so close to Pesach this year, there hasn’t been much time to catch our breath and debrief about the 24-25 claim season. Now is a good time to do so as well as look forward to the coming payments in May and the claim season for 25-26.
Right after Pesach, we were greeted by the great news that NYSED was making payments of the dollars that were withheld from the 22-23 and 23-24 school claims. The 5% owed to schools from 22-23 and the 6% owed from 23-24 claims should now be in your accounts!
Our mandated service team worked diligently this year to ensure that we wouldn’t have a pre-Pesach crunch that would literally crush our staff before the Chag. While it was extremely busy, we are proud to report that we finished our claim load proactively without major concerns about not being able to spend the requisite amount of time needed on each claim. Kudos to our schools who worked hard to get us the required data and were available for important follow-ups. We added more than 10 new claims to our portfolio this year and the claims filed are worth almost $15.5m to our schools!
The payments for these claims must be made by May 31st, 2026 as per State law, so you should see payment notification by that date. Funds will reach your accounts shortly after. If you don’t see any notification by early June, please reach out to our staff right away.
Independently of payment status, ORISS is also conducting reviews of claims. It’s important to address these reviews in a timely manner. Whenever you receive any request for information from the State, please forward it on to your claim specialist.
For the coming year’s claim season, it is never too early to start on your data collection. Since the coming claim year is 25-26, the data is fresh in school staff’s minds now. Please consider moving up your data work to the extent possible. It will positively impact on the process and your claim.
We continue to refine our processes and look forward to sharing improvements for the coming year. Please be in touch if you have any questions or need anything related to Mandated Services.