WASFAA Federal Relations Conference Call – January 27, 2016

Participants: Anafe Robinson, Pat Hurley, Syed Rizvi, Vicki Shipley, Shannon Sheaff, Helen Faith, Rachelle Feldman and Tami Sato

Meeting started at 2:02 p.m.

Welcome, Review of September Meeting, To Do’s

  • Tami welcomed FRC members on the call today and introduced Rachelle Feldman who is the new CASFAA Federal Issues VP.
  • Most of the To Dos from the previous meeting have been done and will be discussed today. Shannon did forward the article on using repayment history instead of CDR’s and there was a report released recently on the same topic.

This and That…

  • The main idea from the NASFAA Town Hall webinar was that not much would happen this year with the limited number of days that Congress is in session and the elections. We can still work with staff members on the RHEA and the message bills. The President’s budget will be released 2/9. As with the FSA Conference, PPY and Perkins grandfathering rules were dominant topics for Q and A. Since the 2015 tax year will be utilized twice there are questions on what to do if numbers reported do not match. Slides on Perkins clarified the difference that UG will have two more years of funding and GP only one. NASFAA sees problem with dictating packaging order with UG continuing borrowers having to exhaust Subsidized DL and UG new borrowers having to exhaust both Subsidized and Unsubsidized DL before Perkins.
  • FRC reviewed the Senate Democrats RED Act that included refinancing of federal and private loans, indexing Pell Grants to inflation and making community colleges free.
  • Shannon and Vicki reported on the first round of Neg-Reg sessions on Borrower Defense. Shannon said they agreed on some additional issues with two pending: #8 on interest capitalization before loan rehabilitation, and #10 regarding collection costs which has incorrect information and has a lawsuit in action on it. Other issues they did agree upon included allowing use of an electronically submitted death certificate for loan discharge, adding Nurse Faculty Loans as an eligible loan for DL consolidation and some technical adjustments to REPAYE plan regarding spousal income affecting monthly payment amount. To Do: Shannon will forward issue papers to FRC. The negotiators expect to receive draft language on February 10 or 11. Mostly a listening session with responses to the multiple questions in the issue papers. Pat was surprised the role of the accrediting agency was not in the discussion. DE seemed to have little control over their overseeing institutions. It was agreed by FRC that the process has to be simple enough so that a student does not have to hire a lawyer. On the NegReg team was a former Corinthian student and former ITT employee.
  • Tami asked if about problems with the PIN switch to the FSA ID and FRC members reported a definite yes. It is a much lengthier process to obtain including security questions. One institution tested the system and had to resend three times. If password or user name is forgotten or not precisely entered this causes very long delays to fix. FRC feels this could discourage students from filling out the FAFSA.
  • DE should be sending out the draft GE Completers List which identifies the students whose debt to earning information will be used to calculate debt to earning rates. FRC members agreed that the 45 days for schools to respond on their accuracy is short.

Leadership Conference/Meeting with Staffers

  • After some listserv messages, we have 10 participants for the meetings with Kathleen Smith and Jenny Prescott. We have the room set for meeting with Kathleen but need the room for meeting with Jenny. (Update: Tami contacted NASFAA regarding our meetings and one of their legislative staff members might be joining us). Vicki has forwarded the list to both.
  • Tami sent the draft talking points document to FRC and Pat thought it was good. Vicki had some revisions for the repayment options section including not specifically recommending REAYE as one of the two options we are recommending. To Do: Vicki will send a revised paragraph for this section. FRC also had a suggestions for the PPY issue. Also verification workload may be alleviated we can expect an increase in PJ requests. Shannon had a suggestion that would assist schools and students/parents. If the question on dislocated workers could trigger release of using the DRT for the prior year it could help when a family member loses a job. To Do: Shannon will send Tami a paragraph with this idea. We discussed an idea to forward fund Pell two years ahead so that information could be obtained earlier but there seemed to be problems such as the inflation factor that is utilized. FSA suggested using the preliminary Pell tables, but that would just lead to repackaging and corrections. The problem for this year only is the fact that the FAFSA will be available three months earlier so the student might very well choose the wrong FAFSA year. FRC members thought it was a positive proposal that counseling be increased maybe even at the point of filling out the FAFSA. With PPY the change will only be with income information the same snapshot for marital status and assets will remain. To Do: Tami will add revisions, logo and contact information for questions.
  • Rachelle went over the CASFAA draft issues document which has some of the same issues as WASFAA. She explained their “combine and align” chart which shows the many different measure used to limit aid to students in relation to their status (SAP, LEU, SULA and R2T4). Staff members have asked for this in previous meetings and the chart is a great tool to see the overlap and complexity for students to understand. The chart shows redundancy. R2T4 is another problem that should be reformed in RHEA. It involves a ridiculous amount of work and complication for very little difference in results.
  • Tami shared the one-page school profile she made for her own school but thought maybe an undergraduate template would be more helpful. (Update: Pat used Tami’s template and developed a template that could more easily be adapted. This will be sent to staff meeting attendees and the listserv.

WASFAA Conference Session Proposal

  • The WASFAA conference will be in Anchorage in April and Tami asked which FRC members would be attending. In the previous FRC meeting we had decided a session on showing members how to be advocates would be a good FRC topic. Pat mentioned that at CASFAA a session was provided on this topic and the PPT could be used as the base for the presentation.
  • After everyone was fighting to do the session, it was finally decided that Rachelle and Helen would be the presenters with Helen taking the lead on submitting the session proposal form by the February 1 deadline date (Update: Helen submitted the form on 1/28) To do: Pat will send the PPT to Helen and Rachelle and Anafe who is unable to attend the conference but will assist with updating the slides.

Next Meeting

  • The next FRC meeting will be on Thursday, February 25th at 2:00.This is a change from our regular schedule due to the Leadership Conference. We will be able to discuss results of our hill visit advocacy. To Do: Anafe will change the scheduled FRC meeting conference call with CCCConfer.