STCS - 10-YEAR STUDENT & STAFF COUNTS COMPARISON

[Shadowninja]

LADY BUDGETDOWN'S 10-YEAR RECEIPT SAGINAW TOWNSHIP COMMUNITY SCHOOLS: STUDENTS & STAFF

Dearest Readers,

The next Saginaw Township Community Schools receipt is on the desk, and this one deserves a careful look.

Using MI School Data and the same methodology Lady Budgetdown uses for every district, we compared 2014-15 with 2024-25.

📚 STUDENT HEADCOUNT
4,924 → 4,548
That is 376 fewer students - a decline of 7.6%
.
Now place that beside staffing.

📜 STAFF HEADCOUNT
844 → 1,041
That's 197 additional staff - an increase of 23.3%.

But headcount only tells part of the story. So, as always, Lady Budgetdown also pulled FTE - Full-Time Equivalent staffing.

🪶 TOTAL STAFF FTE
499.27 → 842.96
That's an increase of 343.69 FTE, or 68.8% during a decade in which student headcount declined 7.6%.

And here's where the ledger becomes particularly interesting.

Teacher FTE:
269.81 → 278.99
+3.4%

Administrator FTE:
28.87 → 34.83
+20.6%

Paraprofessional/Aide FTE:
35.00 → 85.25
+143.6%

And then there is the number that made Lady Budgetdown check the receipt twice:

🔎 NON-INSTRUCTIONAL FTE
165.59 → 443.89

That's an increase of 278.30 FTE, or 168.1%.

In fact, roughly 81% of the entire net increase in STCS staff FTE over this ten-year period came from the non-instructional category alone.

The composition of the workforce changed substantially, too.

In 2014-15, teachers represented 54.0% of total staff FTE, while non-instructional staff represented 33.2%.
By 2024-25:

Teachers represented 33.1%.

Non-instructional staff represented 52.7%.

That does not mean STCS eliminated teachers. Teacher FTE actually increased slightly.

And it does not tell us that non-instructional positions are unnecessary. "Non-instructional" is a broad reporting category encompassing employees who perform many different functions.

What the receipt tells us is much narrower, and much more interesting:

STCS served 7.6% fewer students while reporting 68.8% more total staff FTE, and the overwhelming majority of that net FTE growth occurred outside the teacher category. That's worth seeing.

It's also worth asking what changed operationally over those ten years to produce such a significant shift in staffing structure.

No assumptions required.

The ledger can simply remain open. 🪶

Source: MI School Data / Center for Educational Performance and Information (CEPI). Staff headcount categories may include an individual in more than one staffing group and therefore should not be summed to determine unique employees.

Data compiled and visualized by Lady Budgetdown using publicly available records.

With receipts and respect.

#LadyBudgetdown #SaginawTownshipCommunitySchools #STCS #SaginawTownship #SchoolStaffing #MichiganSchools #PublicSchools #Transparency #Accountability #FollowTheReceipts