Dearest Readers,
Our Grand Blanc review continues.
We have looked at the financial picture. Now let us look at something equally important: how student enrollment and district staffing changed over the same decade.
Using Michigan Department of Education data, Lady Budgetdown compared 2014–15 with 2024–25.
And the two trends moved in very different directions.
🎓 STUDENT ENROLLMENT
8,505 → 7,489
Down 1,016 students, or 11.9%
Meanwhile...
👥 ALL STAFF — HEADCOUNT
1,072 → 1,845
Up 773 people, or 72.1%
📊 ALL STAFF — FTE
772.15 → 1,036.30
Up 264.15 FTE, or 34.2%
But as Lady Budgetdown's regular readers know, headcount and FTE are not the same thing. So let us look a little closer.
🏛� Administrators
Headcount: 27 → 49 (+81.5%)
FTE: 26.60 → 39.77 (+49.5%)
🍎 Teachers
Headcount: 473 → 531 (+12.3%)
FTE: 468.85 → 476.73 (+1.7%)
👩�🏫 Paraprofessionals/Aides
Headcount: 71 → 79 (+11.3%)
FTE: 66.50 → 75.72 (+13.9%)
🏢 Non-Instructional
Headcount: 283 → 937 (+231.1%)
FTE: 210.20 → 444.08 (+111.3%)
That last category certainly stands out.
Grand Blanc reported 654 more non-instructional employees by headcount and 233.88 additional non-instructional FTE over the decade.
Teacher staffing tells a very different story. While the number of individual teachers reported increased by 58, teacher FTE increased by only 7.88, or 1.7%.
Day-to-day substitute teachers also increased from 218 to 249 by headcount (+14.2%). Substitute positions are not reported as separate categories in the FTE data, so Lady Budgetdown does not create an FTE comparison where one isn't provided.
And then we return to the larger picture:
1,016 fewer students.
773 more staff by headcount.
264.15 more staff by FTE.
Those figures tell us what changed.
They do not, by themselves, tell us why. They don't establish whether individual positions were necessary or unnecessary, nor do they measure the services those employees provided.
But when enrollment declines 11.9% while overall staffing FTE increases 34.2%, it is reasonable for taxpayers to understand where that growth occurred and ask what changed within the district over those ten years.
That is what public data is for.
With receipts and respect.
Source: Michigan Department of Education Staffing and Enrollment Data, 2014–15 and 2024–25.
Data compiled and visualized by Lady Budgetdown using publicly available records.
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