MANCHESTER COMMUNITY SCHOOLS — STEP TWO
Well, dear readers...
Yesterday's ledger left me with a question. Manchester Community Schools lost nearly 40% of its students over ten years. At the same time, Business & Administration spending per pupil increased 104.39%, while average teacher salary actually declined.
So naturally, I opened the staffing ledger. 🪶
And this is precisely why I don't like deciding what the numbers are going to say before I read them. Because Step Two did NOT show administrative staffing growing while enrollment declined.
Quite the opposite.
From 2014-15 to 2024-25:
🎓 STUDENTS
1,121 → 680.27
DOWN 39.32%
🍎 TEACHER FTE
48.50 → 39.92
DOWN 17.69%
🏛� SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR FTE
4.00 → 1.42
DOWN 64.50%
📋 SCHOOL ADMINISTRATIVE SUPPORT FTE
10.05 → 5.60
DOWN 44.28%
And at the central office?
LEA Administrator FTE remained essentially flat:
1.01 → 1.00
LEA Administrative Support FTE:
1.00 → 1.00
No increase at all.
That matters.
Because yesterday's Step One showed Business & Administration spending per pupil increasing from $1,276 to $2,608.
UP 104.39%.
And when I checked the underlying totals, total Business & Administration spending had still increased approximately 24% despite the district serving roughly 441 fewer students.
But today's staffing receipts tell me something important:
MORE ADMINISTRATORS DOES NOT APPEAR TO BE THE EXPLANATION.
In fact, Manchester reduced school administrator FTE considerably faster than enrollment declined. So now Lady Budgetdown has a different question.
If administrative staffing was substantially reduced, why did total Business & Administration spending still increase approximately 24%?
Compensation?
Benefits?
Purchased or contracted services?
Changes in how expenditures were classified?
Something else entirely?
I don't know yet.
And "I don't know yet" is a perfectly respectable entry in the ledger.
There is another number worth noticing.
Enrollment declined 39.32%, while Teacher FTE declined only 17.69%.
Put another way, Manchester retained considerably more teaching capacity relative to the number of students it serves than it had ten years earlier.
Yet the average teacher salary went from:
$61,636 → $58,983.
DOWN 4.30% in actual dollars.
So Step Two didn't answer yesterday's question.
It sharpened it.
And that is exactly why I run the same methodology regardless of what I expect to find.
Sometimes the next receipt confirms the first suspicion.
Sometimes it sends the ledger somewhere completely different.
I follow whichever direction the numbers point. 🪶
Source: MI School Data / CEPI Registry of Educational Personnel (REP), December 2014 and December 2024.
The source document is the receipt.
With receipts and respect. 🪶
#LadyBudgetdown #ManchesterCommunitySchools #FollowTheMoney #SchoolFinance #FiscalAccountability #PublicRecords #WithReceiptsAndRespect