The organizations, like TAPS and Veterans Education Success, were not informed of the glitch until students who typically receive Chapter 35 benefits reported receiving only partial or no payments at the start of October.
Up to 75,000 students were impacted, the organizations estimated.
By the time the organizations were made aware, the government was in the middle of a shutdown, with some VA IT workers furloughed and the GI Bill hotline unavailable.
“As I understand it, VA had a fairly robust comms plan in place and ready to go that was stifled due to the shutdown. But the reality is, waiting for the problem to show up is not the time to start talking to students. And that’s a real failure on VA’s part,” Will Hubbard, vice president for veterans and military policy at Veterans Education Success, said during the press call.
“At minimum, at this point, we’re calling on VA to open up the GI Bill hotline,” he continued. “Because a blanket message when you call into the GI Bill hotline is simply not sufficient.”
Read the full article at FedScoop here.