Proposed FY'16 staffing

A quick look at our budget will show you that preK-8 salary and benefits consume 50% of our total budget.  A further 30% goes to high school tuition.  How did the board approach staffing at our school for this upcoming budget?  Are we doing our job to be responsible to the taxpayers in Westford?

The Vermont State Education Quality Standards form the basis of our decision making around staffing.  Do we comply with the state standards in how we staff our school?  The words "must and "shall" show up often in relationship to staffing, leadership, curriculum, services, and more.  Guidelines are provided for the appropriate ratios of students to the staffing for particular services.

All staffing at Westford School complies with the Vermont State Education Quality Standards.  Each year, an audit of each position is performed to determine the following:

• Does the staffing of each position support projected student need for the coming year?
• Does the staffing of each position match the anticipated workload for the coming year?
• Is the staffing of each position appropriate to the Education Quality Standard recommendations for student to staffing ratios?
• Does the staffing support our School Action Plan?

Student need can change drastically as students move in and out of our system.  We attempt to be proactive in staffing to react to those changes.  School Action Plans and Education Quality Standards move less quickly, so changes can be more strategic.

The history of our total staffing (Full Time Equivalent positions, or FTE) is shown below.

Some observations of our staffing:

• Licensed staff change from FY11 to FY16 = -13.7%
• Support staff change from FY11 to FY16 = +4%
• Total staff change from FY11 to FY16 = -7.4%

The downward trend in staffing tracks with our decrease in students.  Support staff positions are traditionally less costly than licensed staff, so shifting appropriate workloads to staff positions can result in cost savings. 

What does the FY16 student to staffing comparison look like?

*Teachers include all instructional educators (classroom teachers, special educators, reading specialist, math specialist)

**Staff includes all employees (licensed teachers, librarian, nurse, counselors, SLP, ETIS, IT, custodial, maintenance, clerical, paras, etc.)

Westford School is well above the state average in all three metrics.  We could handle more students within our current classrooms, so these numbers could get better with the same staffing if student populations increase.  

Recently, the Secretary of Education presented to all state school boards that if they were to increase the state average student to staff ratio of 4.67 to 5.0, it would result in annual savings of $74 million dollars to state taxpayers.  That equates to about 7 cents on the tax rate!  Westford has exceeded that challenge by an additional 10%.