ARMADA PUBLIC SCHOOLS: THE STAFFING RECEIPTS 👑📜
Well, Armada just gave Lady Budgetdown another reason to keep turning pages in the ledger.
In Step 1, we saw that enrollment declined 12.5% over the decade while several per-pupil spending categories increased substantially.
So now comes the obvious question:
What happened to staffing?
From 2014-15 to 2024-25:
Pupils fell 12.5%.
Teacher FTE actually increased 4.4%.
Total administrator FTE declined 8.6%.
But total staff FTE?
That increased 49.0%.
And that is where the ledger gets interesting.
Because the movement underneath that total wasn't evenly distributed.
Instructional aides increased 211.6%.
Student support increased 274.7%.
Other support increased 71.3%.
Meanwhile, within administration, the picture moved in two different directions: district-level administrator FTE increased 23.4%, while school administrator FTE declined 36.6%.
So this isn't a simple story of "more administrators."
It isn't a simple story of "fewer teachers," either.
The receipts actually say something more interesting:
Armada served 244 fewer pupils than it did a decade earlier.
It had slightly more teacher FTE.
It had fewer total administrator FTE.
And yet its overall staffing footprint grew from 186.51 FTE to 277.95 FTE.
That's 91.44 additional FTE, a 49.0% increase, while enrollment moved the other direction.
Why?
That is the question worth asking.
Because numbers tell us where we've been.
The interesting part is figuring out what changed along the way. 👑
With receipts & respect,
Lady Budgetdown