LADY BUDGETDOWN: ROCHESTER COMMUNITY SCHOOLS
Remember that question from Saturday?
A reader wanted to know something my normal staffing data couldn't answer:
When Rochester's administrative staffing changed, was that happening inside the schools, or at the district/central-office level?
Excellent question.
Unfortunately, the NCES website apparently had weekend plans and wasn't interested in cooperating with Lady Budgetdown.
Well. The ledger and I went back. And now I have the receipts.
Using the National Center for Education Statistics district staffing files, I compared Rochester Community Schools in 2014-15 with 2024-25.
Here's what I found:
🏛� DISTRICT/CENTRAL-OFFICE ADMINISTRATION
2014-15: 18.03 FTE
2024-25: 42.00 FTE
Change: +23.97 FTE
+132.9%
🏫 SCHOOL/BUILDING ADMINISTRATION
2014-15: 50.01 FTE
2024-25: 35.00 FTE
Change: −15.01 FTE
−30.0%
Combined, Rochester went from 68.04 administrative FTE to 77.00. That's an overall increase of 13.2%. But THAT isn't the part that caught my attention.
The composition did.
While school/building administrative FTE fell about 30%, district/central-office administrative FTE more than doubled.
So here's today's Lady Budgetdown question:
🪶 What changed over the last decade that resulted in Rochester shifting so much of its administrative staffing from the school/building level toward the district/central-office level?
Maybe there's a perfectly reasonable explanation.
New programs?
Different organizational structure?
Positions reclassified by reporting category?
Responsibilities moved from buildings to central administration?
I don't know.
And I'm not going to invent an answer just because the numbers are interesting.
But +132.9% in one administrative category while the other fell 30% is certainly enough for me to open the ledger and ask the question.
One important note: these are FTE positions, not necessarily individual employees, and they're reported using NCES staffing classifications.
Saturday's reader asked a good question.
It just took the federal government's website a couple extra days to let me answer it. 🪶
Source: National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), District Staff Files, 2014-15 & 2024-25.