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Finance disbursed $548K SHEFA checks in January
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Posted on Feb 08 2012
»Pending scholarship awards for fall 2011 at $391K
By Moneth Deposa
Reporter
Reporter
The Department of Finance disbursed $548,000 in grant awards to the scholars of Saipan Higher Education Financial Assistance last month, according to SHEFA administrator Henry Hofschneider.
This disbursement covered 261 checks worth $473,100 for fall 2011 scholars and 16 checks worth $75,000 for Framingham State College students.
Hofschneider disclosed yesterday that succeeding check requests for 258 students who are still waiting for their fall 2011 grant awards remains pending at Finance.
To date, four check request lists were submitted to Finance, Hofschneider said.
The first list was recently disbursed.
Those that remain pending are the check requests for 187 students on the second list amounting to $272,400; checks for 51 students on the third list amounting to $83,400; and checks for 20 students on the fourth list, amounting to $36,000. These total $391,000.
Because of appeals and re-review conducted on some fall 2011 applications, nine students will be added to these lists. The check request for these students is now being prepared. This amounts to less than $10,000.
All these, if disbursed soon, will complete the awarding of scholarship grants to fall 2011 semester scholars, Hofschneider said.
He said that nothing has been disbursed yet for scholars in the spring 2012 semester, which just started, as review of applications is ongoing.
As of yesterday, Hofschneider said he will be recommending the approval of 159 applications at the board’s next meeting this month. These include 103 ongoing on-island students; eight new on-island students; 47 ongoing off-island students; and one new off-island students. Once approved by the SHEFA board, a check request will be turned in to Finance.
Hofschneider said that SHEFA aims to approve 450 to 500 scholarship applications this semester.
Applications for spring 2012 scholarship were due on Dec. 1, 2011, but for ongoing students, their supporting documents are due at the end of this month. Hofschneider vowed to adhere to the board policy of equally dividing the $3 million scholarship budget for SHEFA: $1.5 million for the fall semester and $1.5 million for the spring semester.
