2014-15 State Aid Calculations for Districts
Available in SAMS and Public View

Selected State Aid Calculations (Output Reports) for Claim Year 2014-15 are available in SAMS and now also available for public view.

Please review the output reports carefully, and contact the State Aid Office as soon as possible if you have any questions or concerns regarding the calculations.

Important: The results displayed in the reports  may not be valid until after all forms and schedules are completed.

Below are detailed instructions for viewing and using output reports.


Table of Contents

  1. Important information concerning the validity of the calculated results
  2. Public View of Output Reports
  3. Instructions Viewing or Printing Output Reports (State Aid Calculations) from within SAMS
  4. The "Sandbox" Data Area
  5. Reminder to Submit Revisions

 

A. Important Information concerning the Validity of the Calculated Results

  1. The Output Reports are the official results for payment purposes, but only when Form Sets A, FB, FT and ST-3 reach the "Clean" or "Clean with Issues" data state.
  2. Changing data on current year SAMS forms does not always affect current year output report calculations. State Aid calculations/output reports are based on data from multiple sources, multiple school years and multiple SAMS system years. For example:
    • Form FT and ST-3 data from the prior school year reported on this year’s SAMS system directly impacts current year Transportation Aid
    • ST-3 data from the prior school year reported on this year’s SAMS system is used on this year’s Approved Operating Expense (AOE) output report; however, this AOE will not be used in current year aid calculations, only in projected aids.

  3. Districts are strongly encouraged to complete all current year SAMS forms and schedules before viewing aid calculation results on SAMS output reports.
  4. SED periodically updates data from external sources (e.g. STAC, BEDS Enrollment data, Facilities Planning project data, etc.). Therefore, the impact of STAC or construction project changes you submit to other offices may not impact your aid calculations immediately. Conversely, your aid calculations may be impacted by changes submitted to SED by other offices in your district of which you are unaware.

B. Public View of Output Reports

Selected output reports are viewable by the general public by visiting http://eservices.nysed.gov/publicsams

The public "view" only displays reports as of the previous midnight (so that callers discussing such reports with SED staff are both viewing the same data set).

For any aid year, these public reports are only viewable if a school district’s data for the four major form sets (Form Set A, Form Set FT, Form Set FB and Form Set ST-3) are submitted to SED and have reached  the "clean" or "clean with issues" data state. Regardless of data state status, districts can always view non-public reports once logged into SAMS.

Note: For the official results of aids payable prior to 2009-10, please continue to use the View District Data page, or access the district data page via the State Aid Home Page.

C. Instructions for Viewing or Printing Output Reports (State Aid Calculations) from within SAMS

To view or print an Output Report within SAMS, follow these steps:

  1. Select the Claim Year in the application header for which you want to view the Output Report and then click the Set Values button.
  2. In the SAMS application navigate to Reports > Output Reports from the main menu.

    The Output Report selection screen will appear. The reports available in the tree are based on the Claim Year that is set in the application header. Click Expand All to see links to all available versions of the reports.

  3. Select a Data Area and Data Version Date.

    The Data Area selection specifies which Data Area the report will retrieve data from and the Data Version Date selection determines what version of data the report will retrieve.  See the "About Data Areas" section of the SAMS Training Manual for District Users (PDF File 1.16 MB) for more information.
    The Data Version Date is set to default as the "Current Date/Time". Districts may also select two other data version date options, "Midnight Last Night" or "Snapshot". The "Snapshot" options choices are made available to districts during the claim year.

  4. Select a report version to view from the selection tree by clicking on it.

    The Output Report will be displayed and link will be available to print the Output Report. A separate window will open with a printer friendly version of the Output Report after clicking on the Print Form link. Use the browser’s print functionality to print the report (you may have to adjust your internet browser's page margins to print these reports correctly). To close the newly opened browser window, you must click on the ‘X’ box in the upper right hand corner of the browser window or press ‘CTRL+W’ when that window is active.

D. The "Sandbox" Data Area

Using the Sandbox, users can enter changes and immediately see the effect on calculated aids and the edit reports without actually affecting official or revision data. The Sandbox data area can easily be cleared and re-used repeatedly, allowing experimentation with different data scenarios. Detailed instructions on how to use the "Sandbox" and view the resulting aid changes in calculated aids are below.

Sandbox Data Area Instructions:

The Sandbox Data Area refers to all form data entered and saved through the Sandbox Data submenu item located within the Forms main menu. The Sandbox Data Area can be used to "play" with a district's data to see the effects that various changes to that data would have. The Sandbox Data Area works the same way the Revision Data Area does, except that updates made to a district’s data cannot be submitted for inclusion in the Official Data Area from the Sandbox Data Area. The Change Submission forms in the Sandbox Data Area provide a summary of the changes made to the data in that Data Area and are also used to clear the data area of any changes that were made in it. To actually submit revisions modeled in the Sandbox area to SED, the user must go to the revision area, re-enter and submit the changes as usual.

As soon as data is saved in the Sandbox all calculations associated with changed data are immediately updated in the Sandbox area only. There is no need to "run" any calculations - any form or report viewed in the "Sandbox" will reflect those changes.

In order to view the effects of such changes, the simply select "Sandbox" from the "Data Area" selection box on the "Output Reports" page described below.

In order to clear the Sandbox, choose "Change Submission" for any form set from the Sandbox Data Area form tree. Click "Clear All Sandbox Data" to reset all Form Sets Sandbox data area back to the "Official" data. Note that this Clear All Sandbox Data is year specific and only clears data for the Claim Year currently selected in the header at the top of the screen.

Please note that your Sandbox area, like the rest of your SAMS data, is accessible to State Aid staff, and that State Aid staff may at times use this area for testing purposes. Therefore, it is advised to clear the sandbox data area before and after  working in it.

 

Reminder to Submit Revisions after Saving

District aid calculations will not be correct if revisions that have been saved have not been submitted!! See urgent tips to ensure that aid calculations are based on the data you intended to submit!

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Last Updated: November 25, 2014