School Administration
How much of Middlebury’s school district is administrators rather than teachers, how much of its budget administration takes, and how much of both is simply the district’s size.
- AUDITED FY 2013-14 → FY 2022-23
- PULLED 2026-08-10
- How much of a district is administration — The state's administrator count bundles coordinators and department chairs with principals and the superintendent's office, a small district needs a superintendent as much as a large one does, and the headcount share and the spending share do not give the same answer.
- Reported school staffing — Staffing figures are positions each district reports to the state under fixed assignment categories. They count reported roles, not workload, and a category boundary can move a person between lines without anyone changing jobs.
- Peer groups — A peer group is a tool for a specific question, not a verdict. A group that is right for comparing school spending can be wrong for comparing snow plowing. Where two defensible groups disagree, this site shows both.
- Per-pupil spending — There is more than one per-pupil number, and they are not interchangeable. The town pages and the statewide rankings print the state Department of Education's Net Current Expenditures Per Pupil; a figure divided from OPM spending and average daily membership, which this site used until September 2026, is a different measure.
- Medians, and why the town is left out of its own — A group is summarized by its median — the middle town, not the average. The subject town is excluded from its own group median, because a town cannot be part of the benchmark it is measured against.
- Audited actuals — Audited actuals are what a town actually spent and received across all its governmental funds, as reported after the year closed. They are not the budget the town adopted.
8 terms bear on this page; the 6 most used are above. Full definitions, what each measure does not support, and the source behind it: How these numbers work.
- The state’s administrator count is wider than the word suggests. Its two categories are “Administrators, Coordinators and Department Chairs — District Central Office” and “… — School Level”. A department chair who teaches most of the day is counted here, next to the superintendent and the principals. The state publishes no narrower count, so neither does this page.
- These figures belong to a district, not to a town. The district or districts that teach this town’s children are named once the data loads. A regional district’s administrators serve every member town alike, and no arithmetic on this page splits them between member towns.
- One superintendent is a fixed cost. A district of 400 students and one of 4,000 each need one. Smaller districts therefore sit higher on every administration share before any decision is taken, which is why the fourth chart below sets this district’s share against every Connecticut district’s enrollment instead of leaving size as an argument.
- Positions and dollars are different questions. A district with fewer, better-paid administrators can spend more on administration than one with more of them. Both are on this page, on their own year bases, and where they disagree the page says so rather than choosing one.
01 How much of this district is administration?
At a glance
How much of this district is administrators, how much of its budget administration takes, and how much of both is simply its size. Every figure below is a count of positions or a share of spending, from the state’s own uniform collections, for the district that employs the staff.
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Source: CT State Department of Education, EdSight FTE Staffing report and enrollment dashboard (October 1 collection, by school year), and the Education Financial System per-pupil expenditures by function (by fiscal year), joined with the town-to-district map in ct_town_school_districts.json by Data/build_administration.py into administration.json. Each tile names the year its own figure comes from. Rank and median beneath a tile are across every Connecticut district with a published figure that year; a tile is flagged only when it sits in the lowest or highest tenth, and a position is not a grade.
What the state counts as an administrator here
Positions and dollars need not agree
03 Where do those positions sit?
Administrator Positions: Central Office and School Level
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Source: EdSight FTE Staffing report via administration.json (staffing.groups.admin_central and admin_school, the state’s categories carried separately). A one-year step in either bar can be a staffing change or a change in how a position was classified that year; the source offers no way to tell the two apart, and the insight box names any step large enough to be worth that caution.
04 How many students are there for each administrator?
Students per Administrator and Students per Teacher
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Source: EdSight via administration.json — numerator staffing.enrollment (the October 1 headcount, not the average membership the OPM finance files use); denominators the administrator categories and the two teacher categories, for the same district and the same school year. The two lines are on different scales of the same axis and are not comparable to each other in level; what each shows is its own movement.
05 How much of this is simply district size?
Administrator Share Against District Size, Every Connecticut District
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Source: both axes from EdSight via administration.json, same district and same school year on each point — vertical, the administrator share described above; horizontal, staffing.enrollment. The fit is a description of these points and not a prediction for any district. The box below also gives the size question without a model, as the observed median share in each quarter of districts by enrollment, so a reader is not asked to take a fitted slope on trust. The statewide version of this chart, with every district ranked, is on the administration ranking page.
06 How does that share compare with the peer districts?
Administrator Share of Staff, This District and Its Peer Districts
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Source: EdSight FTE Staffing report via administration.json, most recent school year the district reports. Peer towns come from this town’s own comparison groups; each is mapped to the district that operates its schools, so a regional district serving several peer towns is one bar, not several. Districts with no reported staffing that year are omitted rather than charted at zero, and the insight box names them.
08 How do those administration dollars compare per pupil?
Administration Spending per Pupil, This District and Its Peer Districts
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Source: EdSight Education Financial System via administration.json (spending.general_admin and school_admin, each divided by spending.pupils, the pupil count the same file reports for the same district and year). The pupil basis is the state’s for this report and is not the October 1 headcount used by the staffing charts above, so a per-pupil figure here and a per-student ratio there rest on different denominators and are not two versions of one number.
What this page cannot tell you: pay
Everything above counts positions or dollars by function. None of it is a salary. Connecticut’s education data portal publishes staffing levels, vacancies, attrition, diversity and preparation — and no compensation figures of any kind, for any district.
That gap is being closed from the records side rather than guessed at. Under Conn. Gen. Stat. § 10-153d(b) every board of education must file a signed copy of each teacher and administrator contract with the town clerk and with the Commissioner of Education, so the negotiated salary schedules for nearly every district in the state sit together at the State Department of Education. Superintendent contracts are not bargaining-unit agreements and are not filed there; each is a separate request to its own board of education.
Until those schedules are in hand this page carries no pay figure at all, rather than an estimate standing in for one. A district with fewer, better-paid administrators can spend more on administration than a district with more of them, and nothing here can currently tell those two apart.
The data behind these charts
Middlebury’s own series behind the charts on this page, as text. Each table names the dataset it came from and the year of every row. The peer towns and group medians the charts also plot are not repeated here; they are in the same source files, linked in the footer.
Who Middlebury is compared with
- Surrounding towns 6 towns
-
Naugatuck · Oxford · Southbury · Waterbury · Watertown · Woodbury
The towns that share a border or an immediate labor market. Right for regional context; they are not matched on size or wealth.
- District Reference Group B 20 towns
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Avon · Brookfield · Cheshire · Fairfield · Farmington · Glastonbury · Granby · Greenwich · Guilford · Madison · Monroe · New Fairfield · Newtown · Orange · Simsbury · South Windsor · Southbury · Trumbull · West Hartford · Woodbridge
The CT State Department of Education grouping of school districts on family income, parent education, family structure and enrollment. Last assigned in 2006, and built for education questions rather than town-side spending.
- Municipal peers 12 towns
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Canton · Marlborough · North Stonington · Burlington · Woodstock · Granby · Bolton · East Granby · Brookfield · New Fairfield · Oxford · East Hampton
Town-side spending, debt, reserves, and tax comparisons. Chosen by a published formula over state data rather than by hand: the nearest towns by standardized distance on the stated variables.
- School peers 12 towns
-
Burlington · Canton · Marlborough · Bethany · Granby · North Stonington · Woodstock · Cromwell · Prospect · New Fairfield · Bolton · Brookfield
Education spending comparisons. Chosen by a published formula over state data rather than by hand: the nearest towns by standardized distance on the stated variables.
Middlebury is left out of each list above, because a town is never part
of the benchmark it is measured against. Group medians elsewhere on the site
exclude it the same way.
Sources: surrounding towns and District Reference Group are
the published groupings; the peer sets are built by a stated formula over CT
OPM data (Data/build_peer_sets.py), not selected by hand.
Education spending and enrollment by fiscal year
| Fiscal year | Enrollment (average daily membership) | Education expenditures | Share of total spending |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY 2013-14 | 1,280 | $19,694,996 | 65.9% |
| FY 2014-15 | 1,241 | $19,951,990 | 66.8% |
| FY 2015-16 | 1,222 | $20,616,454 | 67.7% |
| FY 2016-17 | 1,206 | $21,479,288 | 68.3% |
| FY 2017-18 | 1,203 | $21,513,046 | 67.8% |
| FY 2018-19 | 1,216 | $22,438,773 | 66.1% |
| FY 2019-20 | 1,274 | $23,170,483 | 68.6% |
| FY 2020-21 | 1,206 | $24,902,260 | 70.3% |
| FY 2021-22 | 1,218 | $25,002,438 | 69.1% |
| FY 2022-23 | 1,202 | $26,234,272 | 69.2% |
For a town in a regional district, education spending includes its payment to the district. Per-pupil spending is in the next table, on the state Department of Education's own measure; dividing these two columns gives a different figure. Source: CT OPM, Municipal Fiscal Indicators (ej6f-y2wf) - audited actuals as filed by each town.
Net current expenditures per pupil by school year
| School year | Per pupil | Net current expenditures | Resident students (average daily membership) | Row reported |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY 07-08 | $11,357 | $15,161,820 | 1,335 | Middlebury |
| FY 08-09 | $12,039 | $16,440,169 | 1,366 | Middlebury |
| FY 09-10 | $12,464 | $17,086,392 | 1,371 | Middlebury |
| FY 10-11 | $13,027 | $17,915,423 | 1,375 | Middlebury |
| FY 11-12 | $13,546 | $18,264,591 | 1,348 | Middlebury |
| FY 12-13 | $14,134 | $18,827,647 | 1,332 | Middlebury |
| FY 13-14 | $14,645 | $18,749,283 | 1,280 | Middlebury |
| FY 14-15 | $15,722 | $19,504,845 | 1,241 | Middlebury |
| FY 15-16 | $16,619 | $20,305,882 | 1,222 | Middlebury |
| FY 16-17 | $17,245 | $20,796,768 | 1,206 | Middlebury |
| FY 17-18 | $17,768 | $64,952,313 | 3,656 | District No. 15 (regional district, all member towns) |
| FY 18-19 | $18,357 | $67,255,512 | 3,664 | District No. 15 (regional district, all member towns) |
| FY 19-20 | $18,934 | $70,132,978 | 3,704 | District No. 15 (regional district, all member towns) |
| FY 20-21 | $20,124 | $71,455,492 | 3,551 | District No. 15 (regional district, all member towns) |
| FY 21-22 | $20,798 | $74,314,825 | 3,573 | District No. 15 (regional district, all member towns) |
| FY 22-23 | $21,978 | $77,197,370 | 3,512 | District No. 15 (regional district, all member towns) |
| FY 23-24 | $23,321 | $81,617,804 | 3,500 | District No. 15 (regional district, all member towns) |
| FY 24-25 | $24,838 | $85,265,906 | 3,433 | District No. 15 (regional district, all member towns) |
The state Department of Education's measure (CGS 10-261): current education spending less transportation, capital, debt service, adult education and several receipts, plus tuition paid for students educated elsewhere, divided by the resident students the town is responsible for. A regional district's costs are counted against its member towns. From 2017-18 the state prints no separate row for a town whose regional district runs every grade; those years are the district's figures, and its spending and students cover every member town. Nominal dollars. Source: CT State Department of Education, Bureau of Fiscal Services - Net Current Expenditures Per Pupil (via ct_ncep_towns.json).
Where Middlebury sits among all 169 Connecticut towns, FY 2022-23
| Measure | Middlebury | Rank, lowest to highest | Statewide median |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total expenditures per resident | $4,778 | 124 of 169 | $4,217 |
| Net current expenditures per pupil (school year 2024-25, District No. 15) | $24,838 | 106 of 169 | $23,247 |
| Equalized mill rate | 22.14 mills | 148 of 169 | 17.18 mills |
| Equalized net grand list per resident | $210,548 | 110 of 169 | $189,668 |
| Total fund balance as a share of total expenditures | 19.3% | 76 of 169 | 19.9% |
| Bonded long-term debt per resident | $2,267 | 102 of 169 | $1,741 |
| Intergovernmental revenue as a share of total revenues | 3.3% | 7 of 169 | 20.5% |
A rank is a position, not a grade. Which end of the list is preferable depends on the measure and on what a reader is trying to find out. Per-pupil spending is the state Department of Education's Net Current Expenditures Per Pupil for the school year in its label, every town read in that same year; a town whose regional district runs every grade carries the district's figure, so the member towns of one district tie. Source: CT OPM, Municipal Fiscal Indicators (ej6f-y2wf) - audited actuals as filed by each town. Ranks computed for FY 2022-23 across all 169 towns. Per-pupil spending: CT State Department of Education, Net Current Expenditures Per Pupil (via ct_ncep_towns.json).