E-rate
E-rate is the federal Schools and Libraries programme, funded through the Universal Service Fund, administered by the Universal Service Administrative Company under FCC rules. It discounts eligible connectivity and internal network equipment for schools and libraries by between 20% and 90%.
| Service | Category | Eligible |
|---|---|---|
| Internet access and broadband transport | Category One | Yes |
| Fibre construction to a school site | Category One | Yes, under specific rules |
| Switches, routers, cabling, access points | Category Two | Yes, within the five-year budget |
| Managed internal broadband service | Category Two | Yes |
| Basic maintenance of eligible internal connections | Category Two | Yes |
| Voice services | — | No — support was phased out |
| End-user devices: laptops, tablets, phones | — | No |
| Student information systems | — | No |
| Parent and family communication platforms | — | No |
| Mass notification and emergency messaging software | — | No |
How the programme works
Three moving parts decide what a district receives.
Category. Category One is the connection to the outside world — internet access and data transmission. Category Two is the network inside the building, and it is capped by a multi-year budget calculated per student with a floor for small schools. The per-student figure is indexed and republished, so use the current-year number from the administrator rather than the one in last year's plan.
Discount rate. Driven by the proportion of students eligible for the national school lunch programme, with an adjustment for rural sites. The band runs from 20% to 90%, and the calculation is district-wide for Category Two purposes.
The filing calendar. A district posts a Form 470 describing what it wants, waits the required competitive bidding period, evaluates responses with price as the primary factor, then files a Form 471 during the annual application window. Certification of CIPA compliance follows on a separate form, and invoicing runs through the reimbursement process after service starts. Missing the window means waiting a year, which is why E-rate coordinators guard the calendar so fiercely.
Why your communications platform is not eligible, and why that is fine
The eligible services list is about connectivity and the network that delivers it. A school-home communications platform is an application that runs over that connectivity. It has never been eligible, and no filing strategy makes it so.
We are saying this plainly because the misconception costs districts real time. A business official who has budgeted a messaging platform against E-rate discovers in the spring that the discount does not exist, and by then the budget cycle has moved on.
If a vendor implies E-rate eligibility, ask them to name the eligible service category. There is a published list. A vendor who cannot point at a line on it is describing a hope. Kastr is not E-rate eligible, and we would rather you hear that here than build a funding plan around it.
Historically, voice services were eligible and many districts funded auto-dialler minutes that way. That support was phased down over several years and reached zero, which is the origin of most of the remaining confusion — a district whose robocall costs were once partly discounted reasonably assumes the successor product is too.
What to do instead
Districts fund school-home communications from general funds, from Title programmes where the allocation is defensible, from a technology levy, or from a consolidated line that used to hold three separate vendor contracts. The last of those is more often available than people expect, because this category tends to accumulate overlapping tools: a mass notification vendor, a newsletter tool, a translation service and a teacher messaging app, bought at different times by different departments.
The number worth assembling before any renewal conversation is the total across all of them, including per-message and per-minute charges, add-on modules, and the implementation fee amortised over the term. Districts that do this arithmetic routinely find the consolidated figure is higher than any single line item suggested.
For reference, Kastr's price is one number with everything included: $3.50 per student per year below 5,000 students, $3.25 from 5,000 to 14,999, $3.00 at 15,000 and above, fixed for 36 months, with year four onwards capped at the lesser of CPI-U or 5% under clause 3.2. No add-on modules and no per-message fees, so the budget line does not move when a snow week arrives.
This entry describes what the rule says. Whether and how it applies to your district is a question for your own counsel, not for a vendor.
Questions people actually ask
Is a parent communication platform E-rate eligible?
No. E-rate covers connectivity and internal network infrastructure. Applications that run over that connectivity — messaging platforms, student information systems, learning tools — are not on the eligible services list, and no filing approach changes that.
What is the difference between Category One and Category Two?
Category One is the connection to the outside world: internet access and data transmission. Category Two is the network inside the building — switches, cabling, access points, managed internal broadband and basic maintenance — and is limited by a multi-year budget calculated per student.
When is the E-rate filing window?
The application window opens annually and runs for a fixed period, following the required competitive bidding interval after a district posts its request. Exact dates are published each year by the programme administrator, so take them from the current-year notice rather than from a previous filing.
How is a district's E-rate discount calculated?
From the proportion of students eligible for the national school lunch programme, adjusted for rural status, producing a discount between 20% and 90%. For Category Two the calculation is applied district-wide rather than school by school.
One price. Every feature. Locked for three years.
$3.50 per student per year under 5,000 students. No tiers, no add-on modules, no per-message fees. Published on the site because you should not have to book a call to learn a price.