Grants for Education Management System Home

The grant lifecycle adheres to a finite amount of time for obligation, liquidation and closeout. Each fiscal year, several grantees miss the drawdown deadlines and DESE is unable to fulfill grant reimbursements because deadlines are missed. Please ensure you are not one of those LEAs.  Know the deadlines, ensure your teams know the deadlines and have back-up plans in place for unexpected events.  DESE CANNOT EXTEND THESE DEADLINES.

Review your Grant Award Notices (GAN) to determine grant obligation ends which drive the subsequent grant filing deadlines.    

Important deadlines for grants with an obligation end of June 30^th:

* The GAN says Reimbursement Requests Must Be Submitted Before: 8/16/2026 because on 8/16 the Reimbursement forms will no longer be submittable.  August 15^th is a Saturday and LEAs can submit on this date or before if they choose. 

GEM$ will prevent grant submission after the due date and time as listed in the RFP posting for competitive grants. If an applicant has technical difficulties trying to submit a grant 10-15 minutes prior to the deadline or has an issue getting the right people to submit their piece forward in the system, there really is not much DESE can do to show evidence of that and keep the grant fair, open and competitive. Please plan accordingly.

DESE wants to partner with districts to have successful grant submissions but districts need to uphold their end of the submission process and refrain from submitting within minutes of the grant submission availability.  If issues are encountered so close to the deadline it is very difficult to be able to troubleshoot and assist in time to meet the deadline.  An LEA choosing to wait until the very end to submit is at their own risk of becoming disqualified from review.  
 
Every single competitive grant round DESE hears from at least one applicant who failed to read the submission instructions - Superintendent sign off is required for a comp grant submission to be complete by the due date and time please plan submission timelines accordingly.

Please review the DESE Competitive Grant Submission Policy if you intend to apply for any competitive grants in FY2027.

The Indirect calculator for your FY26 grant budgets will allow grantees to claim more indirect expense (Object Code 08) based on your 04MC – Contractual Services (major) expenses, if any.  Most districts do not opt to claim Indirect expenses or, if they claim indirect, have no major contracts, so this change will have no effect for those districts. 

Due to federal regulatory changes, for FY26 the eligible amount counting toward indirect from Object Code 04MC was raised from the first $25,000 to the first $50,000 for major contracts.  We have just completed the adjustments in GEM$ to allow the calculations/validations to reflect this change.  At your option, your district may now revise your grant budgets, if you have expenses budgeted in 04MC for contracts exceeding $25,000, to budget additional indirect in Object Code 08 for these contracts per the adjusted Indirect calculator.  You will need to decrease other expenses in order to stay within your budgets if you opt to increase indirect.  This change, which has been made for federal and state grants allowing indirect costs, will continue for FY27 grants and fiscal years going forward. 

A final reminder - indirect, like all grant expenses, must be drawn on a reimbursement basis.   

• GEM$ Next Steps: Revisions, Reimbursement, and Reporting (Recording)
• Slide deck from presentation

           From the 2023 Fall Federal Grants Conference