Q&A
Council member inquires about education funding decisions
6:30:15
·
175 sec
Council Member Rita Joseph questions OMB Director Jacques Jiha about the rationale behind baseline funding decisions for education programs. Jiha explains that funding limitations necessitate prioritization, with some programs receiving long-term funding and others receiving one-year funding as a value statement of their importance.
- State funding is used for baseline programs due to its long-term nature
- OMB aims to find permanent funding sources for programs currently funded year-to-year
- Changes to the Foundation Aid formula are not expected to impact these programs due to conservative forecasting
Rita Joseph
6:30:15
Few questions around education.
6:30:19
I know that in the executive plan, there were some programs that were baseline with state funding, others were funded with 1 year city funding.
6:30:26
So what were some of the considerations when you were deciding which program would baseline and which program would be funded for a year?
Jacques Jiha
6:30:34
It comes down to funding.
6:30:36
It is you know, we wish, you know, we had all the funding needed to fund all of this program going forward to baseline them going forward.
6:30:45
What we the statement making, those program has critical for us.
6:30:49
This is a values this is our value statement.
6:30:52
This program are critical to us even they are funded 1 year at a time.
6:30:56
They we are they are very important to us, and we'll continue to look for permanent source of funding, okay, to fund this program going forward.
6:31:05
It's not just a question we decided these are not important, these are important.
6:31:09
No.
6:31:09
It's just a question that we didn't have enough long term funding to fund all of these programs.
6:31:14
So therefore, we decide we would pick a number certain number of projects initiatives to fund long term.
6:31:22
Others, we just make a value statement.
6:31:25
This is important to us.
6:31:26
We're funding it now, but we're going to keep working to see it in the future where we're gonna find a permanent source of funding to keep them going.
Rita Joseph
6:31:33
So what was the rationale behind state funding used to baseline these programs?
Jacques Jiha
6:31:37
I'm sorry?
Rita Joseph
6:31:38
What was the rationale behind using state funding to baseline these programs?
Jacques Jiha
6:31:42
Because this is the state funding is a is a is a long term funding.
6:31:46
Okay.
6:31:46
Whereas, you know and so therefore, we had you know, it's it's not that easy to find those, source of funding, you know, everywhere and at that level, also at that magnitude as well.
6:31:59
So therefore, we identified a source of funding that is long term.
6:32:03
So we used that source of funding, but for other programs we didn't have those.
6:32:07
So therefore, we have to keep looking.
6:32:10
Okay.
6:32:11
And but we want to also communicate to the rest of the world that to evaluate statement that, hey, this is these programs are critical to us.
6:32:19
Even though we're funding them 1 year at a time, they are very critical to us.
6:32:22
We're gonna continue to look for long term source of funding for this.
Rita Joseph
6:32:27
Foundational if foundation aid is currently being reviewed for possible change by the Rockefeller Institute, if the foundational aid were to decrease due to these changes, would, or further decrease in enrollment, would these programs be in danger of being cut?
Jacques Jiha
6:32:41
The, advantage that we have with being conservative in our forecast is we usually don't assume Foundation Group, Foundation Aid Growth in our budget.
6:32:52
So therefore, I'm hoping there's no cut because we use those funding like we just said to fund other things.
6:33:00
But it is unlikely that these things will be impacted because of changes to the formula to the, you know, to the way the work formula is calculated.
