 All right, so today we're going to be talking about a California state benefit for the dependence of veterans, but I want to note that I'm actually from the county veteran service office, and we process this benefit for the dependence of veterans out of the county office, even though it is a state benefit. So I want to talk a little bit about what the county veteran service office does essentially when a person comes back home after serving in the military. They might have sustained injuries or experience some trauma in the military. They have to navigate the benefits that they have earned from the VA. They might have earned education benefits, health care benefits, or vocational benefits, and it's not automatically given to them. Sometimes they'll have to fill out forms or get into contact with the right people. And so the county veteran service office is here to help veterans as they navigate the federal VA system. Of course, our goal is to provide our veterans with the best possible chance for success in our community. We help veterans and their family members apply for a lot of different benefits to include federal, state, and local benefits. Today, specifically, we're going to hone in on some on a specific state benefit, which is the college tuition fee waiver. But in addition, veterans come to our office to get help connecting with health care, vocational programs, housing, and disability compensation from the federal government. This is how you can reach the county veteran service office. We're co-located in the DOS benefits and resources hub located at 2 Goff Street in San Francisco. We're open Monday through Friday from 9am to 12, and then again from 1pm to 4. Please note that we are closed for that lunch hour. You can also reach us via email. And in fact, the two best ways to turn in your application packet for the college tuition fee waiver is going to be either dropping it off in person at our 2 Goff location, or getting PDF copies of all of your documents and emailing them to SFCVSO, which stands for San Francisco County Veterans Service Office, at sfgov.org. I've also included our website, which I'm going to show you in just a moment because there's some key information on the website about the college tuition fee waiver program. And this is what it looks like. So if you go to your internet browser and you type in sfgsa.org forward slash CVSO, which stands for County Veterans Service Office, you're going to see our website here. And just under the kind of main banner there, you're going to see a menu of services that we offer for veterans and their family members. You're going to see a menu for the college tuition fee waiver, which we'll talk more about today, and then other resources in the community. If you were to click on the plus sign next to the college tuition fee waiver for dependents, it opens up a sub menu that looks like this. So on our website, it shows the email address that you can reach us at. So links to checklists. So these are really helpful when you're going through the checklist and seeing what are the documents that I need to gather to make a complete application. A lot of folks think that they submit the DVS 40 form, which is the application form, and then that's it. But in fact, think of this as your admissions packet for college. So you do have a form you have to fill out with your basic information, but there's a number of other documents that have to go in to make it a complete packet. And that's what we're going to talk about in more detail today. But if you want to go on to our website, pull up the checklist, and those are really helpful guides for when you're collecting those documents. On our website, there's also a fact sheet and then some of the supplemental forms that you may need in order to complete your packet such as this VSD dash 020 VSD dash 021, etc. The application for the application form is also available on our website and a couple of other forms there. So let's get into the actual benefit. I've got two logos up on the screen. One is our logo, the San Francisco Human Services Agency, the County Veterans Service Office falls under this. This is our parent agency, but I also have the logo for CalVet, which is the California Department of Veterans Affairs. This is the State Department of Veterans Affairs, not the federal, which is the US Department of Veterans Affairs. And the reason I have that logo on there is because this is a state benefit. Again, it is processed through your County Veterans Service Office, but I want to make sure that you guys are understanding of the difference in terms of benefits. The VA offers tuition benefits for the veteran. These are known as the GI Bill. The benefit that we're talking about today is different than the GI Bill. It's not for the veteran specifically. It's mainly for the dependent, meaning the son, daughter, spouse of the veteran. All right, so one important thing to note is that this is a college tuition fee waiver. A lot of people conceptualize this benefit as the state is going to be handing money over to your college to pay your tuition fees. It actually doesn't work like that at all. No money is exchanged between the state and the academic institution. There is a law that was written into California state law that says if you qualify for this benefit, the university, the Cal State or the community college must waive your tuition so they do not get reimbursed for this. And I like to bring that up because it's important that we're getting everything right when we're applying for the benefit. If something is wrong in your application and worst case scenario, you're not qualified for it, but we're accidentally telling the college that you are qualified for it. You will be on the hook for that money in the end, because again, the state is not, doesn't have like a pool of money to reimburse the colleges. So something important to keep in mind. That's why in the title of the benefit, it's the college tuition fee waiver. There's four different plans under this state program plan A, B, C and D. At the county level in your county Veterans Service Office, we process plan A and B. So those are the two plans that we're going to be focused on. If you're interested in learning more about plan C and D, go ahead and go to the CalVet website to learn more about that and you can work with the state and they can process that. But I would say the majority of our students, like 90% of our students are applying under plan B and maybe about 10% of our students are applying under plan A. So we'll talk about both of those today. Another important thing that I want to note upfront is that the college tuition fee waiver covers your academic year, which is typically two years. So an academic year typically starts in the fall. So it'll start, let's say in the fall of 2023 and it'll end in the spring of 2024. So when you're filling out your DVS-40 application, please note that when it asks for your academic year, it's actually asking for two years. What fall session are you taking and what spring session are you taking? A lot of our students will just put in the present year, so the 2023, and we really need to specify because you could potentially be applying for the 2022-2023 academic year and we don't want to mix this up. So that's an important thing to note when you're filling out your form. Another important thing to note is that typically an academic year does not include the summer session. So it is the responsibility of each student to verify with your academic institution what year the summer session belongs to. So contact your admissions officer at your school or your financial aid office and ask them. And please understand that many schools do not waive the tuition for summer sessions. This benefit is mainly being applied to the fall and the spring in terms of waiving your tuition. If a school does accept the college tuition fee waiver to waive your summer classes, that is up to the individual school. It is not written into law that they have to accept this to cover your summer session. If you can't reach someone at your academic institution to be safe, I would just note that if you're planning on taking summer sessions, those are likely going to come out of your pocket. The college tuition fee waiver may not apply. Let's talk about what the responsibility is of the county veteran service office. Again, this is the state benefit. What is our role here? While we are responsible for processing your complete application process packet, excuse me, and approving or denying your waiver in accordance with the law. What that means is that unfortunately we do not get any discretion when it comes to approving or denying the application fee waiver. You know, we have students who come to us with really extenuating circumstances. And in most cases, it's not a factor of whether we want to approve it or want to deny it. We are simply processing the packet in accordance with the laws and the regulations. If we mess up and we accidentally approve your application packet or let's say someone in my office says, well, this person had a really compelling story. So I just went ahead and approve their application packet. We're going to get in a lot of trouble and unfortunately the college may end up charging you tuition fees retroactively. Again, it's a waiver program. We do not have a bank of money that we use to cover the cost that the college is and neither does the state. So if your packet is not correct, it is the college does have a right to go back and charge you tuition fees. So that's why we're having this workshop. We want to make sure to get this right. We want to work with you in order to make sure that when we're processing these packets, we're doing it correctly. It's our responsibility to accept all of your documentation. If you're applying for plan A and plan B, please do not send your application to the college. Please do not send your application to the state. Send it to the county. That is our sole responsibility in accepting those documents, checking them over with you and making sure that you're ready for that approval letter. Schools responsibilities are kind of minimal here, but it's important to note that each program within your school determines whether or not they accept this waiver and how they're going to apply it. And I say that because we get a lot of questions such as, well, can I use the college tuition fee waiver for this extension school? Or can I use the college tuition fee waiver for business school or law school? We don't have the answer to that specific question because it is up to the individual academic institution as to how they accept the waiver, how they apply it. Let's say you're planning to go to UC Berkeley, for example, and do you want to know if the waiver is going to be able to apply to law school? What I would do is two things. I would get in touch with your admissions office, your financial aid office and ask them. But I would also contact UC Berkeley law directly and say, you know, does your specific program accept this waiver? And if so, how do you apply it? Because they might give you an answer based on their individual program that we don't have for you here. And again, the county has no power to compel a school to accept this waiver. Even if we issue you an approval letter and you take it to the school, they might still deny waiving your tuition based on how they apply it. So we always ask the students, check with the academic institution and the program specifically before you apply, before you go through the House of Applying. Because once you get that approval letter, once we issue the approval letter, we don't have any way to compel the school to accept it after that. So check with your school, open that communication up early and keep it going. I think that's the main point on this slide. So let's go forward and talk about which plan should I apply under. Again, I said this before, but I'll say it again, I would say about 90% of our students are applying under plan B. About 10% are applying under plan A, but we're still going to go through each just to make sure that you understand the differences between them. So the eligibility for plan A, you must be the unmarried child of a wartime veteran, and that veteran must be totally disabled, 100% disabled due to a service-connected disability. Or the veteran could also be totally disabled due to service-connected disabilities at the veteran's time of death. Or the veteran could have been a person whose death was officially rated as service-connected by the VA. The child, again, the unmarried child must be over 14 years old, but under 27 years old in order to be eligible for plan A. Unless that child also served in the military, unless they are also a veteran, and then the age limit would be from 14 to 30 years old. So really specific eligibility requirements here. Again, this is the reason why the majority of our folks are applying under plan B, but we'll go through them because this does apply to some of our students. Plan A can also be applied to the spouse of a wartime veteran who has been rated 100% disabled by the VA, and there are no age restrictions for the spouse. The unmarried surviving spouse of a wartime veteran who was totally disabled due to service-connected disabilities at their time of death or whose death was rated as service-connected by the VA. Again, no age restrictions for spouses. There is age restrictions for the child. Or an unmarried dependent of a veteran who's been declared missing in action, captured in the line of duty, or forcibly detained by a foreign government. With plan A, the student also has to sign a VSD-20 certifying that they are not receiving VA Chapter 35 benefits. So when I say VA Chapter 35 benefits, I'm talking about a federal U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs benefit called Chapter 35, which is also going to apply to the dependence of veterans, not to the veteran themselves. This is not the GI Bill, right? If you're using this state college tuition fee waiver and you elect to receive plan A, you cannot currently be receiving the Chapter 35 benefit from the VA. That changes for plan B, though, and we'll go over that in just a minute. But let's talk a little bit more about plan A and what's required to provide a complete application packet, okay? So the beginning of your journey on creating your application packet is always going to be the DVS-40. This is available on our website, okay? The DVS-40 application is not the end-all-be-all, though. In addition, you have to compile a complete packet, which should include a PDF copy of either the student's birth certificate, or if it's the spouse applying the marriage certificate. And I'm going to say this a couple of times. The student's birth certificate, your name, the name of the student on the birth certificate, it has to match every other document that's required in your application package. If you've had a name change, you will need to provide court order showing us the legal name change occurred. And it's the same thing for the veteran. So we run into issues, unfortunately, when the veteran, it's common for us to run into the issue when the veteran is a woman. And if the birth certificate, the mother's birth certificate, or I'm sorry, the name of the mother on the student's birth certificate has the maiden name. And then later, the veteran changed their name. We will need the court documents showing the legal name change. So again, every name on the birth certificate has to match every other document in the package, including the application. And you'd be surprised I've had folks who parents who like missed, forgot, or I don't want to say forgot, but maybe never realized until they looked at the birth certificate that their kid's name was different. And so they're putting one thing on the DVS 40 application. But then when we get the birth certificate, we're like, Well, this is actually your son or daughter's middle name. And they're like, Oh my God, I didn't even know that I've been calling them this their whole life. Right. So it does come up. Make sure the names match. We need a PDF copy of the student's unexpired government issued ID card. Another issue that comes up is when the parents are applying maybe for the student, they say, Well, he's just a high school student, right? He's a senior he's 18 and he doesn't have an ID card or he only has his school ID card. Unfortunately, again, we have to go by the book and that student is probably going to have to make an appointment at the DMV and get their very first ID card. A passport would also be sufficient in this case, but we cannot accept a student ID card like from your high school. It also has to have a picture of the student. The VSD dash 020. This form comes with your plan a packet. This form is available on our website and the student has to sign that form, not the veteran. I have these first four documents underlined because these are what is required of the student or the applicant, I should say. And now we're going to get into what is required of the veteran as a part of the plan a packet. The veteran's most recent disability award letter from the US Department of Veterans Affairs, it must be dated within a year of when you're submitting the application. So if your father or mother has a disability award letter from the VA, but it's dated, you know, 2019. Unfortunately, we cannot accept that they have to go back to the VA and request a recent copy of the disability award letter. The reason for that is because the VA does the, the, the veterans disability rating can change from year to year. And so we want to have the most recent letter. The veterans DD 214 our veterans are going to know what that means, but for students or others on the call, this is your veterans discharge paperwork from the military. If the veteran is deceased, we do need a copy of the death certificate. Again, all of these make a complete college tuition fee waiver application packet and all of the names must must match on all of the documents. If any of them don't match, then we need court order showing the legal name changes. I think that's it for plan A. It's going to be very similar for plan B, but let's get into it and go through it one by one for plan B. So this is the eligibility for plan B. It's a little bit more lenient, I would say, than plan A in order to be eligible for plan B. Well, with one major caveat and we'll talk about that. To be eligible for plan B, a child, you must be a child of a veteran who has a service connected disability service connected disability. This is much more lenient than plan A because it doesn't say 100% permanently and totally disabled. It just says the parent has to have a service connected disability that rating could be 80%, it could be 70%, it could be 50%, it could be 10%. It could even be 0%. And yes, the VA does issue 0% disability ratings in certain circumstances. So this really opens up the field for a lot of veterans and their family members. Of course, if the veteran has been killed in service or has died of a service connected disability, you would still be eligible. And in terms of the threshold of having that 100% service connected disability rating is not as high for plan B. One thing that is very different between plan A and plan B is that plan B is an income based program. We're not talking about the veteran's income. The veteran could be a millionaire. We're talking about the student's income. In order to be eligible for plan B, the student must have an annual income that is less than the annual national poverty level. For academic year 2022-2023, that's $14,097 as shown here on the screen. I think I have it updated in a couple of slides, but for academic year 2023-2024, it's $15,225. So it goes up a little bit every year. The student must prove that they did not make more than the national poverty threshold. Okay, that's a big difference between plan A and plan B. Plan A, we don't need any of your income documents because it's not an income based program. Plan B, we do. Wartime service is not required of the veteran. Again, the important thing is the VA disability rating. There's no specific age requirements and no prohibition against using chapter 35 benefits in conjunction with plan B. The required documents are similar. I have this middle section here highlighted because this is the main difference between plan A and plan B. Again, plan B is income based. It's based on the student's income. And so as a part of your application packet, in addition to the DVS-40, the birth certificate, the student's unexpired government issue ID, the student is also going to have to submit copies of their IRS tax form 1040 or what we call a letter of non-filing from either the IRS or the state franchise tax board. We'll talk a little bit more in detail about this because a lot of people get hung up on this specific bullet point. We still need the veteran's disability letter. It has to be recent. We still need the veteran's DD 214 or death certificate if the veteran is deceased. And again, all of the names must match. Let's talk a little bit more about this income verification because it's very important. So verification of income, we're essentially asking for the student's tax documents. If the student worked and they made less than $15,000 in the year 2022 and they're applying for the college tuition fee waiver for academic year 2023-2024, we need the tax documents showing that that individual worked and didn't make over the $15,000 threshold, right? And the way that we determine this, the way that we have to determine this is we look at a line in your tax documents that says annual gross income. So if you have tax documents or if you've seen them before, you'll have to go down to, I want to say it's line 11, but I might, I think it's changed sometimes from year to year, but there's a specific line on your income tax forms and it says annual gross income. That is the number that we must go off of, okay? If it shows somewhere else in your tax documents that actually your income was $11,000, but you made, you know, X amount of tips or whatever. There's a lot of lines in your tax forms. I'm not a tax professional, but the only one that matters for plan B verification is the line for annual gross income. If it's more than $15,225, we must deny your application. We do not have any leeway in that. If it's under, then you're good to go, okay? If you submitted your tax documents to the IRS electronically, we need the confirmation sheet that says that the tax return was accepted electronically, okay? So it's actually two documents you'll have to submit. You'll have to submit the 1040 as well as the verification that the 1040 was accepted electronically. And then if the student did not file taxes because they didn't work and they weren't required to file taxes, not just because they chose not to file taxes, then you can also submit the letter of non-filing from the IRS or from the state franchise tax board. There is a line on the DVS-40 that asks for AGI, annual gross income. It must match exactly what's in your tax forms where your tax form says annual gross income, whatever is in that line. It has to match what you write in the annual gross income field on your DVS-40. If it's different, we're going to send it back to you. There's a second line on your DVS-40 that asks what is the value, in other words, the dollar amount of financial support that your parents give to you. It's important to note that if we add the line on your DVS-40 for annual gross income and the line for value of parental support, and it's over the $15,225 threshold, we will send it back to you. So doing a little math here, what that means is that let's say the student made $11,000 in 2022 and they're applying again for the academic year 2023-2024, and they write $10,000 in the value of support from the parent. That's over the $15,000 mark, okay? So we're going to send that back to you. Now, the funny thing about the parental value of support line is we do not require any financial statements to prove that number. So in most cases, if I see that a student made $11,000 on their annual gross income and then they write $10,000 in the value of support line, I'm going to send that DVS-40 back to the student and say, go ahead and lower that value of support dollar so that both your AGI and your value of support do not equal more than the $15,000 threshold. It's as simple as adjusting your DVS-40 to say that, okay, you can't change your AGI, right? That has to match your tax forms, but you can change your value of support. You can lower it and say, well, actually, my parents only gave me $2,000 in support and so that keeps you under the $15,000 threshold. We could move forward with your packet. Let's talk about some other forms that might be required for your college tuition fee waiver packet. The VSD-021, this is for students whose veteran parent cannot sign, most commonly used if the veteran has passed away or if the veteran and the student are estranged from each other. Bottom line, a lot of folks get confused and think this is the benefit for the veteran. And it is in some way, but in reality, the benefit belongs to the student. It is the student who should be applying. It is a student who should be gathering all of these documents. And ultimately, even if the veteran did not want to grant this benefit to the student, we would still override the veteran's desire at that point because we do consider it to be the student's benefit. If you're the stepchild of a veteran, you're still eligible as long as you became a stepchild prior to your 23rd birthday. We do need copies of your parent's marriage certificate and we still do need a copy of your birth certificate. And then there's a specific form that you have to fill out that's also available on our website. And similar to adopted children, you are still eligible as long as the adoption occurred prior to your 23rd birthday. We do need a copy of the adoption orders. Denial letters. Let's talk about them. We never want to issue denial letters. What we'll do in most cases when we find that, you know, your application was filled out incorrectly or it's missing some documents. We don't automatically issue denial letters. We'll always try to get back with you and say, hey, you're missing this document. Can you please resubmit it? So in that sense, it's not like your application for admission to college, right? If you mess something up in those applications, you just get denied. With us, we're always going to try to work with you. There are specific situations in which we must issue a denial letter, though. Most of the time, it's because something is blatantly wrong. Like, you know, the student's age limit is really far over where it should be or the student's income is really high and they're applying for Plan B, right? And in those cases, we are required to issue denial letter. And on the denial letter, it will specifically state why you were denied and it will even then give you options for appeal. We try not to issue those whenever possible. Another thing that does exist is a retroactive college tuition fee waiver. This is applicable in a scenario where if you notice the eligibility requirements for Plan A and B, they all require the veteran to have a service-connected disability rating, right? Again, whether that be zero or 100, it depends. But let's say the veteran doesn't have their VA disability rating yet because they've never applied for disability compensation. First thing I would say is welcome to the county veteran service office. That's what we do here. We help veterans apply for disability compensation. We want to get that veteran appointment with our office right away so that we can help them in that process. But even after we submit all the documents to the VA so the veteran can get service-connected and get a rating, it still takes the VA some time to decide on that veteran's claim. And so they created this thing called retroactive college tuition fee waivers so that while your veteran parent is waiting for the VA to decide on their pending claim, you can still submit your application for the college tuition fee waiver as long as we get all of your complete packet during the academic year that you're applying. We can hold onto it and then once the father or mother is approved and becomes a disabled veteran with a rating from the VA, we can retroactively approve the student and get the student veteran, I'm sorry, the student's tuition waived. So let's say you get an approval. You have a complete packet and we've looked it over and we're approving it. You'll get an email and it's based off of what email you put in your DVS 40 application and this is kind of what it'll look like. It'll say congratulations. You've been awarded the fee waiver and it'll have this attached letter. And in that letter is a one time code that you take to your school and then once it's used at one school, it's no longer valid. So we ask that you keep the code private and only share it with your college admissions office. This is what the letter looks like when you click on the attachment. It'll kind of look like this. This is an example code. And this is kind of what the letter will look like. And again, you take this to your admissions office. We do not take it to your admissions office for you. So please don't forget that final step. If you've done all the work up until this point and you forget to take your letter to the admissions office, your tuition will not be waived. So don't forget that final step. A denial letter will look like this. Again, it's going to have a checkbox next to the reason why you were denied. And then at the very bottom, it'll give you options for how you can appeal your denial to the state. I know we went through that really fast and it was a lot of information. So I want to open up to questions. And let's see. So I've given everybody the ability to unmute themselves so you can go ahead and ask your question or go ahead and write it in the chat and I will answer the question. Okay, thank you. So, Melanie asked, do you pay master and PhD and MD? Melanie, this is such a great question. We talked about it in the beginning, but I'll go through it again. So it is the responsibility of your academic institution to determine how they apply the college tuition fee waiver and if they apply the college tuition fee waiver. So for those of our students who are interested in these advanced degrees, we don't want to dissuade you from going after that. But you really need to have a conversation with the college that you're trying to get into or that you've been accepted to and specifically with the program and ask them, do you accept the CalVet college tuition fee waiver? And if so, how do you apply it? The reason that you have to have the conversation with them is because it is up to the individual academic institution. We cannot compel an academic institution or a specific program to accept your waiver. So one college might accept it, one college might not, one program within a college might accept it, and one program within a college might not. So you could call up UC Hastings, for example, and say, do you accept the college tuition fee waiver for your law school? And they might say, yes, actually the law school does. And then you might call them up and say, do you accept the college tuition fee waiver for a master's in business? And they might say no. So it's up to the individual program. And I really want to emphasize this. We do not have a list of who accepts it and who doesn't or what programs accepted and what programs don't. Our general guidance is that if it's a UC school, if it's a Cal State school, or if it's a community college, then they should in one form or another accept the college tuition fee waiver. But it could change from year to year. And so do not rely on your county veteran service office to tell you which schools and which programs accept. You must contact the school directly. Thank you for the question, Melanie. So, yeah, that answers the second question Melanie had, but Chiara is asking, because I work at school and I didn't file and I make less than 15,000, but I have my W2 that proves I only made around 4,700 from working at school. Let me look in the chat. I just I want to make sure I'm understanding the question here, because I worked at school and didn't file. I'm assuming this is a situation in which the student is saying they didn't file taxes because they worked at their school. So, Okay, if I'm understanding the question correctly, there's a student who did earn income, maybe less than $15,000, but did earn income and did not file taxes last year. So I'm not a tax professional. I can't tell you whether you was required for you to file taxes or not. You know, just because you, I think a lot of folks think like why didn't make that much so I didn't have to file taxes and I can't respond to that in some cases that's true in some cases it's not true and the person's mistaken. But what I will say is that for a complete application packet, you need to have one of two things. You need to have proof that you filed your taxes, or proof that you were not required to file taxes. So if there is a situation in which you're saying I didn't make that much money so I wasn't required to file taxes and therefore I didn't. That's fine. You just need to submit the proof from either the IRS, or the state franchise tax board that says, you know, John Doe or Jane Doe did not file taxes in the year 2022, because they were not required to file taxes, and we will accept that and we can move forward with your application packet. Because I'm a dependent on my mom's taxes still. And so I just didn't know because I know for my application, I think me and my mom ended up sending her 1040, because it shows that I'm a dependent. And I just didn't know like, oh, should I also send my W2, which shows that yes, I was working, but I didn't file nor make over 15,000. So the state is very clear with us on what we can accept and what we can't accept. We, we please do not send your veterans tax information to us. We cannot accept any veterans tax information, even if it is for the purpose of proving that you were a dependent. The only two things that we can accept is either the students proof that they file taxes or a letter from the IRS or the franchise tax board that says that you were not required to file taxes. For whatever reason, it could be because you were dependent. It could be because you didn't make any income could because you didn't make enough income for whatever reason. But we do need that letter. Again, this is not something that we're allowed to kind of put the pieces together and make a judgment call on the state is very clear with us on what forms we're allowed to accept and what forms were not. We cannot accept the parents tax documentation. So my advice would be, call up the franchise tax board, make an appointment with them, and let them know that you need a letter of non filing. You can also do this on irs.gov. And you can request a letter of non filing through the federal government to, but one way or another, if you did not file taxes, we need proof that you didn't. You weren't required to and we can't accept your parents tax documents as that proof. I will, I will say one caveat. And I'm kind of hesitant because I feel like it kind of sends the wrong message. So I want to be really clear in how I state this. There was a memo issued that states that if you live in California, because the governor is allowing an extension on folks filing taxes. The way that that affects us and our processing of this benefit is that technically speaking, we don't need your tax documents right away if you're applying for plan B, right? Because plan A, you don't need tax documents period. But let's say you're applying for plan B. There is a form that we can have you fill out that you're essentially certifying that you weren't required to file taxes. And that you can produce the proof that you weren't required to file taxes as soon as we ask you for it. But because the governor is not requiring people to file taxes right away, we're not going to require that proof me right away. But in that memo, I think it says something along the lines of come October, which is the new tax deadline, you will need to submit those documents to us. So my preference is to give you the information up front so you know what documents are needed. But Kara, we can talk offline about that that separate form and you can look it over I can explain it to you in terms of what it means legally because if you say I'm going to sign this form and I'm going to get the waiver for the tax documents right. And then come October, the state tells us know you now you need to go back and collect all those tax documents and you don't have the documents. Again, your tuition might be waived and then they'll go ahead and apply it right back. So we don't want to put anyone in that bad situation. But it is potentially an option and I can talk to you about that offline Kara. Melanie has another question she has. Can you combine fast, tell grant unsubsidized loan and California tuition fee waiver. If eligible does excess money go straight as refund to student subsidized loan scholarships. Okay. It's, it's there's to my knowledge there is no. There's nothing preventing you from applying for the CalVet college tuition fee waiver and fast and Pell grants and loans. But to your question of, does the excess money go straight as a refund to the student. That's a question for your financial aid office again I want to emphasize the CalVet college tuition fee waiver is not. There's no money being exchanged it is a fee waiver. So the way the law is written is that if you are eligible for the waiver, your institution will waive your tuition. The, the state is not actually giving money to the college to pay your tuition. And so in that sense with the college tuition fee waiver there's never going to be a situation where there's excess money to be given to the student because there's no money exchanged. There's just a law that says if you're eligible, if you apply if you're approved, the college has to waive. They're essentially just taking the hit on that money the college doesn't get that money from you doesn't get it from the state right. But in terms of like, let's say your tuition was waived through the college tuition fee waiver but then you also got fast and Pell grants. And somehow those were applied to like your student account. You'd have to talk to your financial aid office and ask them what happens to that to those funds. I would definitely recommend that you get in touch with them. So I just put our email or department email in the chat. So if anybody has any more questions after the program, we can go ahead and submit them to me and I'll forward them to Elena. Thank you. And actually, let me see. Can I just share the website since we have a couple more minutes. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Because it's such an important. Oh, does it show on your screen? Yes. Okay. Like, never sure if it's sharing or not. So this is our website and you can, there's a very long URL here, but all you have to do is type in SFHSA.org forward slash CBSO. There's like a shortcut website, right? This is what it looks like when you first log in or when you first go to the website. And then if you expand this section here, college tuition freeware for dependents. There's checklist for plan B. So it talks about your DVS 40. It talks about, you know, the birth certificate, whether you're biological child stepchild or adopted child, your identification card. There's some detailed information here about the tax information. And there's detailed information about the letter of non filing. There's even some instructions here on how you can obtain a letter of non filing from the state franchise tax board or the IRS. So I think that would be really helpful for some of the folks who had questions. And then it breaks it down into what documentation is required from the veteran. And then this is again the income threshold for 2022 2023 for 2023 2024 it's 15,225. So print these out, use these as guides when you're building your application packet. I think it will make the process go a lot smoother. There's also a checklist for plan A. And then any of the forms, the additional forms that you're required to submit those are also listed here. If your parent, the veteran is interested in getting disability compensations from the VA, and they have not done so yet. They can schedule a virtual meeting with our office. They could book that meeting on their own by clicking this link and then clicking file for VA disability compensation and choosing our next available dates and times. And then all they have to do is put their name, email address, and then their appointment is set and we can get them started on that process. If you have additional questions, you can also go onto our website and click on college fee waiver. This is a 30 minute session between you and one of our veteran claims representatives, and they can follow up and answer any additional questions that you might have. Excellent. Thank you so much, Elena, for this very informative and important presentation on the benefits for veterans and their families. We would like to thank everyone for joining us today. Again, before signing off, I would like to remind everyone that slides of the presentation and the recording will be available and we'll be sending them out shortly. So thanks again, and the presentation is concluded. So thank you so much.