Pennsylvania EDS Program
Get your EDS worksheet right before next year's is due
We review your EDS paperwork and tell you what is wrong, what it is worth, and what to fix before your next filing.
Request a worksheet review
Tell us where to reach you. Jeff will reply with where to send the worksheet, and we come back with what we find, well ahead of next year's deadline.
Please give us your name, school and a working email address, then try again.
Would rather talk it through first? Book twenty minutes with Jeff
Got it, thank you
Jeff will reach out within one business day. If you would like to put time on the calendar now rather than wait, that is the faster route.
The same errors tend to carry from one year's worksheet into the next. Finding them now means next year's starts clean.
What the EDS program pays
The Economically Disadvantaged Schools program is the third Pennsylvania education tax credit, alongside EITC and OSTC. It carries a 99 percent credit for business donors on a two year commitment, and it adds up to $2,000 to each scholarship student's award, or $4,000 in high school, with all of a student's scholarships together capped at $8,500 or the school's tuition, whichever is less.
It is administered by BLOCS. Schools do not compete for it in the usual sense. A school files a qualification form, the state decides which schools qualify, and qualification turns on one number.
The 51 percent test
- At least 51 percent of your students must have received a tax credit scholarship in the prior school year, and
- each of those scholarships must be a baseline tax credit scholarship of at least $500 for pre-K and grade school, or $1,000 for grades 9 through 12.
Awards from any Pennsylvania scholarship organization count toward that baseline, not only BLOCS. The EDS supplement itself does not count toward it. The denominator is total enrollment, which is the part that catches schools out, because it is never printed on the worksheet itself.
Sources: Pennsylvania Public School Code, Article XX-B: section 2002-B (which schools qualify), section 2005-B(b) (99 percent credit on a two year commitment) and section 2006-B(a)(1)(iv) (scholarship supplement of up to $2,000, or $4,000 in high school). Program administered by BLOCS.
What we keep finding
These are the five defects that show up in nearly every worksheet we review, in the order they cost the most money.
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The outstanding balance column typed over the formula
The most common and the most expensive. Somebody pastes a value where a calculation used to be, and from then on the column quietly drifts away from the real number.
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Numbers stored as text
A single stray character turns a cell into text. The total skips it without any visible error, and the column runs light. Nothing on screen tells you this happened.
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Pre-K pulling the percentage down
Pre-K students now count in total enrollment. If they are not receiving a $500 award they sit in the denominator and not the numerator, and a school that qualified last year can miss this year. Half day counts two for one. Full day does not.
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Sibling rows copied across
A pre-K student carried at a sixth grader's tuition. One keystroke makes it, nothing on the sheet reveals it, and it distorts the tuition that caps the award.
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Students missing from the list entirely
Usually the biggest number on the page. Every enrolled student who never made it onto the award list is up to $2,000, or $4,000 in high school, that nobody asked for. Some are over the income limit and some never applied for aid, and those are two different problems.
What the review gives you back
We rebuild the worksheet, repair the arithmetic and formatting, and return it with a funding model showing where you stand against the 51 percent test, what your coverage gap is worth, and which rows still need a decision from you. Anything that is a judgment call about a student's real situation we flag rather than change.
We do not inflate a cost of education and we do not touch anything that belongs to your judgment rather than ours. Most of what we find is arithmetic that drifted.
Questions we get
We already submitted. Is it too late?
Usually not. Worksheets can be corrected after submission, and it is worth knowing what is in yours either way, because the same defects tend to carry into next year's version. Send it over and we will tell you what we see.
We are below 51 percent. Is there any point?
Yes, and this is the case where a review is worth the most. Pre-K counting and the income multipliers for documented students can move the percentage in both directions, and schools that assumed they were out have turned out to be in. If you are genuinely below the line, the contact at BLOCS is Kathleen Harvey, and now, while there is a full year to plan, is the moment to have that conversation.
What do you need from us?
The worksheet itself, your total enrollment, and whether your pre-K is full day or half day. That last one changes the arithmetic more than people expect.
Do you charge for this?
The review is how we introduce ourselves. If it turns into a longer conversation about your fundraising, we will have that conversation openly rather than through a review.
What is EDS, versus EITC and OSTC?
They are three separate Pennsylvania credits. EITC and OSTC are the ones most schools run, open to individuals through a special purpose entity as well as to businesses. EDS is for business donors, carries a higher credit, routes through BLOCS, and is limited to schools that pass the 51 percent scholarship test. A school can participate in all three.
