IMPORTANT CHANGE FOR THE SPRING SEMSETER

The VA Regional Processing Office (RPO) has requested all schools assist in streamlining the backlog of processing education benefit claims.

SPC Veterans Services has reviewed the certification of benefits process to the VA RPO. The biggest problem that causes backlog both at SPC Veteran Services and at the RPO  is that students change schedules and resubmit a VA Schedule Verification, thus creating education benefit claims to the VA RPO to be reprocessed and at times causes VA debt issues for the student.

Each time a schedule verification is submitted by a student to Veterans Services, it must be reviewed for the changes, reprocessed and resubmitted to the VA RPO for final processing and approval. The RPO processes one claim at a time and does not make accounting adjustments. This can cause additional book stipends to be sent to the student, overpayments of BAH and generate erroneous payment to the college for tuition and fees.

In order to rectify the back log and debt management issues discovered during this review, SPC Veterans Services is implementing a new processing procedure that will take effect on October 26, 2015 at the start of early registration for the Spring semester.

It is requested by Veterans Services, that students using Veterans Education Benefits submit a Veterans Schedule Verification only once for the semester. The verification will be processed in the order received. The class schedule submitted will be reviewed, processed and certified to the VA RPO. Remember, classes need to be with in the program plan that is stated on the tuition and fee schedule. If you are taking classes outside of the program plan they will not be certified to the VA for benefits.

If a student adjusts the initial class schedule that was certified to the VA RPO, those adjustment will be recertified after the first week of classes also known as the “add/drop” period.

The best practice will be, that students submit veteran schedule verification only after the classes registered for are not going change. If there is a likely hood of changing a schedule do not submit verification, as this causes issues with processing of claims from the VA RPO. Which is causing backlog and debt issues. Central Processing will run a report after the add/drop timeframe and make adjustments accordingly.

If you have any questions please address them with any of the four SPC Veterans Services Centers on campus.

Thank you

Jeff Cavanagh

Director, Veterans Services