RLIS Eligibility

Below is the link to the current version of the REAP Master Eligibility Spreadsheet. Please review the information and contact your REAP State Coordinator with updates.

Click Here: Fiscal Year 2024 Master Eligibility Spreadsheet

  • Please note that if your LEA has submitted a request to update its primary contact or other LEA information, it may take up to a week to see that change reflected on the Master Eligibility Spreadsheet here.

Who is Eligible?

An LEA is eligible to participate in the RLIS program if it meets the statutory criteria of being both low-income and rural (see ESEA section 5221(b)(1)).

  1. To be considered low-income, 20 percent or more of the children ages five to 17 served by the LEA must be from families with incomes below the poverty line, based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE). Rural non-geographic LEAs for which SAIPE data are not available that are eligible based on the same State-derived equivalent of SAIPE data that the State uses to make allocations under Part A of Title I of the ESEA, consistent with 34 C.F.R. § 200.72, are also eligible for RLIS funds.
  2. To be considered rural, all schools comprising the LEA must have a school locale code of 32, 33, 41, 42, or 43 (assigned by NCES), or be located in an area of the State defined as rural by a governmental agency of the State.

RLIS-eligible LEAs do not receive their grant funds directly from the Department. The Department awards funds to SEAs administering the RLIS program, which in turn award subgrants to eligible LEAs based on SEA procedures. Therefore, an SEA may establish an award process that does not guarantee every RLIS-eligible LEA will receive a grant.

To see how RLIS differs from SRSA, view the SRSA-RLIS Comparison Table.

Eligibility Spreadsheets for Previous Years

The spreadsheets in the red box above list, by state, all LEAs that have been eligible for awards in previous years. Please note that data in some of the columns were used for informational purposes only (e.g., column Y) and were not used in determining allocations.