Each school and school system has its own challenges. Depending on where you are located in the country and around the world, these challenges are varied and often reliant on the local tax system, local economic development, or tuition and donations from your school community. In this Discussion, you must interview the local budget director from your local public school system or the budget director from a local private school. In this interview, you should get a feel for the budget challenges based on the local funding system, fixed cost expenditures, costs for human capital, and strategic planning. For your thread, write a summary of the interview.
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After consulting the Learn material in Module 4: Week 4 and information from your own research, reply to at least 2 of your classmates threads from Module 3: Week 3. Include information pertaining to school finance that has a direct impact on you, your school, district, or local municipality. You must include support from the Module 4: Week 4 Watch item to strengthen your reply. You may also use outside sources.
reply to the following:
Interviewing the chief budget analysis Mr. Wendell Curry of the Future Fielded Integration Directorate (FFID), the researcher found some compelling challenges in estimating and procuring funds for the directorate and subordinate elements. AR 1-1, Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (2016) states, [Department of Defense] DOD components develop and submit detail budgets to Congress for appropriates and authorization. (p. 11) These submissions are three years before execution; essentially establishing long-range funding requirements. The greatest challenge is, from year to year, the actual funding can and is often cut. Leaving the organizations scrambling to find cost savings and efficient and effective ways to use funding provided. It was often considered program funding, civilian and military pay, Warfighter needs, equipment, ammunition, and research would be fully funded. However, as we have seen in the past years, there is no funding program protected, examples are sequestration, equipment timelines extended and school cuts. (Curry, 2021). Another challenge is the timely passing of a budget. Congressional appropriations is required in Oct of the new fiscal year (FY), as October 2020 is the first of the FY 2021, the new FY2021 budget should be enacted. Congress has not passed a budget in many years with a Band-Aid approach with continuing resolutions and repeated extension where we do not get any funding until February or March of the execution year. Further exacerbating the problem, as Mr. Curry expanded upon, on or about the end of July organizations start assessing fund usages. If funds are not spent or obligated by contract, the funds are pulled back (2021) by parent organizations to fund elsewhere, allowing only four months for the organization to execute fund spending.
Lastly, local validation of funding follows regulatory guidance and is processed through several echelons of cost-benefit analysis, prioritizing, and budgeting program boards. Initial work on budgeting starts in February at the lowest level and works its way through multi-commands and racked and stacked, where is if finally consolidated into the Department of Army budget that will be proposed in October 2021 for FY 2022 appropriations (Curry, 2021). Remarkably, this year we developed a budget for the funding year 2025, and we had not received our current funding for 2021.
References
Curry, W. (2021, April 9). Chief Budget Analyst. (S. Troendle, Interviewer)
Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution. (2016). Army Regulation 1-1. Washington, D.C: U.S Army. https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN3948_r1-1_FINAL.pdf
