Mileage Reimbursements

As a part of statewide legislation concerning the use of personal resources for state business, UT employees and independent contractors are permitted to make claims for mileage reimbursement relative to using their personal vehicles for official university business. This reimbursement is funded and audited by the state, and is paid at the prevailing state mileage rate of $0.585 per mile beginning July 1, 2008.

Education Services reimburses mileage for coordinators and facilitators who supervise PDS students in the field. A complete mileage worksheet must be submitted by the appropriate deadline in order to receive payment. Once the worksheet is received, the mileage will be verified and the individual notified of any corrections.  

MILEAGE WORKSHEET DUE DATES (FALL/SPRING 08-09)

August 2008 Mileage - October 1, 2008

September - December 2008 Mileage -  December 3, 2008*

January - May 2009 Mileage -  May 6, 2009*

*If you have school visits beyond the due date, you must contact the Education Services office to receive an extension for submitting your mileage worksheet.

END-OF-THE-SEMESTER DOCUMENTS

All Coordinators and Facilitators - Cooperating Teacher Evaluations (must be e-mailed to Chani Wellborn)

Coordinators and Facilitators of Apprentice Teachers - Summative Assessments (originals with all required signatures must be turned in to SZB 294)

Mileage reimbursements will not be processed until all of these documents have been received.

 

MILEAGE WORKSHEET

• All mileage claims must be submitted using this MS Excel mileage worksheet.  If you are unable to download or use this Excel worksheet, please contact Chani Wellborn (471-1511) immediately.

• Please be sure to complete your contact information at the top of the page highlighted in yellow.

• Inter- and intra-city claims must be clearly listed as daily point-to-point trip segments with mileage noted for each individual segment. To calculate these distances, please use Yahoo! Maps, MapQuest, or Google Maps with the provided list of school addresses. Education Services suggests using Yahoo! Maps to calculate the distances in order to take advantage of their address book feature.

• The following address should be used for the UT campus:  1950 Speedway, Austin, TX 78712

• Trip segments should be reported in chronological order. It is acceptable to use multiple lines for a single day, should a large number of trip segments make it necessary. However, multiple days should not be combined on a single line.

• The daily and total mileage cells in the preformatted spreadsheet are self-calculating and cannot be modified.

• After downloading and completing the worksheet, attach the document to an e-mail message addressed to Chani Wellborn: cwellborn@teachnet.edb.utexas.edu. Accurate completion of this document will ensure a complete and speedy reimbursement.

• Mileage logs or worksheets for each claimant (including all contact information) are due in the Education Services Office no later than 5:00 p.m. on the Wednesday during the last week of classes. Further, travel taken between the end of a spring semester and the end of the fiscal year (August 31) must be submitted on a separate mileage worksheet from the long semester by 5:00 p.m. the first working day in October.

• Mileage logs that do not include daily reports of segmented travel detail or are submitted with any daily mileage segments left uncalculated will be returned to the claimant for completion, which may delay processing.

• It is strongly suggested that all mileage claimants retain some form of travel record at least up to the point that payment is received in the event that a claim should require resubmission or verification.

• For further help with mileage reimbursement, please see the Mileage Instruction Guide.

If you have any questions about downloading or using the electronic worksheet or concerning the mileage policy in general, please call or e-mail Chani Wellborn (471-1511 or cwellborn@teachnet.edb.utexas.edu).

 

ADDITIONAL POLICIES AND PROVISIONS

• Reimbursement is applied to trips taken for:
  • Supervisory and conferential visits to schools with PDS students and cooperating teachers during regular instruction days, and
  • Established or confirmation of new field placements by coordinators

• Daily mileage involving trips taken solely for the purpose of teaching courses in the field will not be reimbursed.

• The number of visits to be reimbursed should be commensurate with a facilitator's field supervision load for that semester. For the first and second semesters when students are in the field for 1.5 - 2 days, the 20 hour-per-week facilitator (appointed to a cohort to facilitate 22-25 students) typically visits one-third to one-half of the students each week; the number of trips claimed for reimbursement should reflect this, and each cohort should claim a total number of trips based on a 20-hour course load for one facilitator or 10 hours for each of two facilitators.

• Segment mileage should be calculated for the shortest direct route between any two points in a day's travel.

• The state expects regularly “clustering" visits and avoiding daily visitation to each campus to minimize travel.  Schedule visits to a particular school(s) on a specific day(s); knowing that there will be flexibility for exceptions.

• Facilitators who are UT employees may only claim mileage from home if that distance is shorter than if they had traveled from the UT campus.

  Example:  Franklin HS is 8.2 miles away from the UT campus. If a facilitator lives 10 miles away from Franklin HS, he/she can only claim 8.2 miles (UT to Franklin HS). If the facilitator lives 5 miles away from Austin High School he/she may claim 5 miles (Home to Franklin HS).  (Section 4.06(B) of the Texas Travel Allowance Guide - see below)
  

• Facilitators who are NOT UT employees may claim mileage from their home to all locations in which observations are made.

• Facilitators may not claim mileage from home to the UT campus (or UT campus to home) at any time. (Section 4.06(C) of the Texas Travel Allowance Guide - see below)

 

TEXAS TRAVEL ALLOWANCE GUIDE

Section 4.06(B):  "...a state agency shall reimburse a state employee who travels between the employee's residence and the employee's duty point for mileage. If the travel occurs during working hours, the amount of the reimbursement may not exceed the amount that would have been reimbursed had the employee traveled between the employee's place of business* and the duty point.**" 

Section 4.06(C):  "A state agency may not reimburse a state employee for mileage when the employee travels between the employee's residence and the employee's place of employment except as discussed above (extraordinary circumstance: threats to public health or safety, causes or threatens to cause damage to public property, or when travel occurs during non-working hours*).

* Working hours for supervisors (facilitators and coordinators include all hours that public schools are in session, and M-F 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.) 

** For our purposes, the "duty point" is the school where supervision is taking place or any location other than the UT campus where a seminar is held; and the "place of employment" is the UT campus, except for home-based specialists contracted solely in a supervisory capacity (non-UT employees).