Education Travel Allowance - Some answers?

If you are a Foreign Service family, and you're about to send your kiddo off to university, you might have some questions about how that travel can happen, and if there are allowances that support that. As a matter of fact, there are! The allowances are not always easy to understand and are open to interpretation by your Finance and Management Officers, so be sure to have that conversation with them so you fully understand their interpretations. 

Plan ahead, have your kiddo get their items ready, and let's prepare for a successful send-off to university!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:04

Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for listening. I am Susie Churs-Brown, and I am here with Healthy Expat Parent. And I am going to talk to you today about specifically for Foreign Service families, we're going to talk a little bit about education travel for your university kid. Well, first of all, congratulations on successfully getting your child accepted into a university. I hope that there wasn't a lot of drama involved and your child is super excited and ready to go off on their new education adventure. It is one of the most proud experiences and scary thoughts of parent faces getting their child ready to launch from their nice warm embrace of the family life and then off on their own where they will be mostly responsible for themselves, which is a little intimidating. So congratulations parents, you did it. I am going to talk to you today about the education travel allowance. This is not, there are several different kinds of allowances that are related to education that often get kind of confused. And so I just want to quickly clarify what we are not talking about. So we are not talking about education allowance, which is the bucket that would cover the sort of thing such as away from post school allowance. So like if your child is potentially going to go and attend a boarding school, or if your child needs any sort of tutoring or learning support assistance, that would all fall into the education allowance. That is not what this is. is specifically for kids pre-K through grade 12. And that is something that supports their learning at post or at their boarding school. The other thing that we are not talking about today is the SNEA, which is the Special Needs Education Allowance. That is overseen with the support of med and in tandem with your school and learning professionals will support your child's learning needs. This is an amount that's determined, an allotment and allowance that's determined by your health unit together with your RMO. Oftentimes the RMLP is involved. Again, that is pre-K through 12, not university. So we are not talking about that. So what we are talking about today is education travel. Education travel will get your university child to and from your, all the way to and all the way back from your child's university one time per 12 months. And that's really important to remember because that is different than the other travel options that are available for you to utilize to get your child to and from. An education allowance will take your child, regardless of what your home leave address is, they will take your child to their university. The other thing that's really important to remember about education travel is that it is because it is going to get your child all the way to university, it doesn't necessarily only have to be on an airplane. So maybe this might involve a train ticket or it might involve potentially a rental car, but that is open for interpretation. I should... I should also preface this with, this is for foreign service families who are serving overseas. Even if you are a foreign service family and you are serving in a stateside post, this is not an allowance that you can use to get your child to and from university. It is only for families that are serving overseas. So if your child is in their university, and they are starting their third year, for example, and you move overseas at that point, then you can start tapping into this allowance. However, those first two years, it is not available to you. So this, again, is for foreign service families that are serving overseas. And I should also say, and it's really, really important to remember this, that while this is an allowance that is written into the FAM, it is open to interpretation at your post. So your management counselor and your finance officer will interpret how these FAM allowances are available to you and how you can tap into them. So they're not trying to rip you off. They're just trying to follow their best interpretation of what is written in the FAM. And it's not 100% clear what is written in the FAM. So have a little patience as you're having these discussions. And plan in advance because it can be really, really, really hard to book tickets, especially, for example, if your child is coming back in December and it's holiday travel season. So it can be really hard to get that ticket for your kid. It is also only available to university students who are on your orders. If your university students are not on your orders, then they are not going to be allowed to get this allowance. So this university student has to be on your orders. You have to be serving overseas and they need to be pursuing their undergraduate degree. It is not for... graduate degrees. If your child is going to be pursuing, for example, a year abroad, then you can talk about this interpretation with your finance officer and the education travel allowance may very likely be allowed to be used to get your child to their university where they're having exchange year. But Let's talk a little bit about the education travel. So as I said, it is an allowance that gets your child from your post to their university. So for us, that meant coming from where we are posted now, which is on the other side of the planet from where my child attended university, and he flew all the way to DC, and then he took the train down to his university. Both of those legs were paid for with this allowance. We could have flown him a little closer, and then we could have submitted the receipt for the Uber from the town that was a little closer, but for us, him flying to DC was just fine. The return ticket, which has to be used within 12 months, is from the same point So for example, if your child flies to DC, they have to fly back from DC. If your child flies to Richmond, they have to fly back from Richmond. So it's really important to remember that particular allotment. There are other travel options available to your child to get to and from university. And they maybe have a little bit more flexibility, but they may also, not allow as much options. So for example, you might be able to use an R&R ticket or a home leave ticket. But remember that those, while those can be cost constructed, your finance and GSO and travel office will have specific restrictions that they can do on your cost construct. And there is no requirement for that child to be able to get all the way to post. So for example, if you use your R&R and your travel office is very strictly interpreting your R&R ticket, they may only pay to get your child to D.C. and then you are out of pocket for the train ride to wherever, for example. There are a couple other things that go along with Actually, before we move on to what else you can include in this travel, education travel amount, there are a couple other things that you might wanna consider when you're getting your child to and from. And it also depends on how much time you want to spend with your child during the academic year. I can't imagine having the holiday season without all of my kids around me. So what we did was we used the travel allowance to get to school. So that would be his August ticket. And then he returned on his travel ticket, his education travel ticket in December. And then in January, when he returned to post, he used an R&R ticket. So again, there's a little bit difference and nuances on what is allowed and what is not allowed, especially with cost construction. But the education travel is all the way there, all the way back. You can also, as I said, use your home leave ticket, but then some travel offices very strictly interpret where you can fly your home leave ticket to. So they may say only to your home leave address. We used to have a lot more flexibility, it felt like, for cost constructing our home leave tickets, but our recent experience has not been super flexible. So again, this is just really, really open to interpretation. And I hope that you can be patient and flexible with your travel office and your finance office and your management. With the education travel, what typically is allowed, and again, this is very much based on negotiations with your travel office. We do not have a travel office here at Post. We use a contracted travel office out of Dubai. And I believe a lot of the regional posts do also use this travel office. And we don't have any like sweetheart deals or special agreements with any airlines. There are some posts that do have allowances or agreements with airlines. So they may have... for example, an extra bag that all US government passengers may be able to take, or easier upgrades. Or we recently just were allowed to fly more than just at 2 o'clock in the morning, so we're all very excited about that. But other airlines have a lot more flexibility. But often what the education travel will include is two bags and then they will pay for one more bag. So then that child would have three bags to travel with. Or you can get a unaccompanied air baggage shipment of 250 pounds. In the UAB, so the unaccompanied air baggage, you can, as I said, 250 pounds, and you can include in that clothing or seasonal items or furnishings or, I mean, what have you, maybe toiletries, et cetera. It's only 250 pounds, but you can very wisely use 250 pounds and make that really work for you. So, That is just a one time. The UAB is one time per year to post. And then at the end of the academic year, you can do a UAB back to post. Or you can also, instead of the UAB back to post, so at the end of the academic year, the child is returning home with all of their belongings, et cetera, which might be a little silly if you know that child is going to be attending that school again. The other thing that you can use that travel allowance for is to pay for storage. So you can have your child organize a storage unit and then you submit those receipts against that travel allowance. Again, with the airline agreements, you may, when you have the education allowance, there are less strict interpretations oftentimes of the city pair So you might be able to, especially depending on where your child is going to school. So for example, maybe your home leave address is somewhere, let's say Cleveland, Ohio, but your child is going to school in Hawaii. The education travel will take them all the way to Hawaii and all the way back to your post. It doesn't matter what your home leave address is. And that Hawaii airfare will probably include a leg or two that is not necessarily on a city paraphrase. But if you then, for example, send your child back on a home leave or an R&R ticket, then you'll have to remember all of these requirements and restrictions that will be definitely enforced by your travel office.

UNKNOWN: 15:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 15:09

I'm trying to think what else I might need to include for you to remember about this travel allowance. This is a very important conversation for you to have with your finance office, with your travel office slash GSO, and with your management counselor. And just know that a lot of these accommodations are, definitely open to interpretation. We found that our previous finance officer was significantly more flexible and willing to try and make things work for us. But he had kids and college age kids, whereas our current finance officer does not have any kids. And so he has a much more strict interpretation of what these allowances are and are not available for. So just be patient and don't try and break the law, but do know that these interpretations of these FAMs and these allowances can be a little bit, they're not written in a very clear manner. So it can be very confusing to try and figure out what is and is not allowable. Definitely have the conversation beforehand Don't just start submitting receipts for things because that won't necessarily work out in your favor. And also know that with the RNR and home leave tickets, I mean, every foreign service officer in between posts will have a home leave ticket. But if you're serving at a non-RNR post, like for example, most of the EUR, Most EU posts do not have any R&R options, but the education allowance, maybe the best option is to have your child trained to and from their university if they are going to school somewhere in Europe as well. The other thing that may be open to interpretation and a conversation worth having is potentially, for example, especially in the you live in Europe and your child is attending university in Europe conversation. Strictly speaking, the ticket should be one way to university and one way back to post. Potentially, it may cost less for your child to instead get a Eurorail pass and they may be open to, that sort of arrangement instead. So then your child could have the year-long Eurorail pass, and then you can add on extra stops. All of these are important conversations to have. So again, thank you so much for listening. What we talked about today was the education travel allowance, getting your child to, your university child to and from their undergraduate university. This is an allowance that's available for foreign service officers serving overseas. It is not a part at all of the pre-K through 12 education conversation. It is not at all. a part of the conversation for any sort of special needs support. This is only getting kids to and from their university, their undergraduate degree. I do hope that this was helpful, if not for anything else than to start your list of questions that you can go and make an appointment with your finance and management counselor and have a conversation with them on what you're, child can and cannot do on their way to university. Congrats again on, you're almost there, ready to launch your kiddo. And congrats on having these conversations early. And I hope that you have a super great send-off for your child. Thanks again for listening. And I will have another recording soon.