3/31/2021

CARES Act Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund

The CARES Act Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund-IHE/Student Aid provides funding to institutions to ease the pressing financial need of students due to the disruption of campus operations from coronavirus, (including eligible expenses under a student’s cost of attendance such as food, housing, course materials, technology, health care, and child care), pursuant to the authority duly delegated to the Secretary under the CARES Act and associated with the coronavirus emergency, as stated in Proclamation 9994 of March 13, 2020, “Declaring a National Emergency Concerning the Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19).

Students cannot apply for assistance directly from the U.S. Department of Education but should contact their institutions for further information and guidance.

In order to enable Kehilath Yakov RABBINICAL SEMINARY (KYRS) being an institution of higher education to provide grants, KYRS was obligated to submit a Recipient's Funding Certification and Agreement for Emergency Financial Aid Grants to Students under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, Section 18004(a)(1) of the CARES Act, which authorizes the Secretary of Education (“Secretary”) to allocate formula grant funds.

1.      The Certification and Agreement that the institution signed and returned to the Department did certify that the institution has used, or intends to use, no less than 50 percent of the funds received under Section 18004(a)(1) of the CARES Act for the sole purpose to provide Emergency Financial Aid Grants to students.

2.      The total approved amount of funds that the institution will receive from the Department pursuant to the institutions submission of the Certification and Agreement for Emergency Financial Aid Grants to Students totals to $167,211 to provide emergency financial aid grants to students.

    3.      The total amount of Emergency Financial Aid Grants distributed to students under Section 18004(a)(1) of the CARES Act as of 3/31/2021 totals $161,750.

      4.      The estimated total number of students at the institution eligible to participate in programs under Section 484 in Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965 and thus eligible to receive Emergency Financial Aid Grants to students under Section 18004(a)(1) of the CARES Act are about 157.

      5.      The total number of students who have received an Emergency Financial Aid Grant to students under Section 18004(a)(1) of the CARES Act are 134.

     6.      Specific methods are used by KYRS to determine which students receive Emergency Financial Aid Grants and how much they are eligible to get under the revised CRRSAA Act. Students eligible for grants are all U. S. citizens and qualified aliens (refugees and asylum), including students who left school for any reason during the pandemic. Unlike the CARES Act, students are no longer required to be eligible for Title IV funds to receive emergency grants under the CRRSAA. However, institutions need to prioritize students with “exceptional need.” Non-Title IV eligible students also include non-degree seeking, non-credit, dual enrollment, and continuing education students.

     7.      The law requires that emergency student grants be provided to “students with exceptional need,” but does not require that student recipients be Pell Grant recipients or Pell Grant eligible. Many other factors were utilized to determine how much, such as expense budgets, total allocation, and total number of eligible students. KYRS did disburse funds of between $750 - $ 2500 per student.  

      8.      Instructions were provided by the institution to students that the sole and exclusive purpose of providing emergency financial aid grants are for their expenses related to the disruption of campus operations due to coronavirus, such as food, housing, course materials, technology, health care, and child-care expenses.