Staffing vs. Enrollment — Every Connecticut District
How each district's teachers, administrators and paraprofessionals changed as its enrollment changed, set beside what Connecticut districts as a whole did over the same years.
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Picking a town highlights it in every chart and table on this page, and the highlight follows you to the other ranking pages. Clear the box to remove it.
How to read this page
Students per teacher is a district’s enrollment divided by its number of teachers. When both change, the figure moves according to which one changed faster:
| What happened between the two years | Students per teacher | On this page |
|---|---|---|
| Students fell faster than teachers, teachers were added while students fell, or teachers grew faster than students | Goes down: each teacher has fewer students | A negative change, near the top of the ranking |
| Teachers fell faster than students, or students grew faster than teachers | Goes up: each teacher has more students | A positive change, near the bottom of the ranking |
| Both changed by the same percentage | Stays the same | Zero, on the grey diagonal of the scatter |
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Is up or down better? This page does not say. More students per teacher means fewer teaching positions to pay for each student. Fewer students per teacher means each teacher has fewer students to teach. Which of those matters more is a judgment for residents and their boards.
- In most Connecticut districts, teachers have fallen by a smaller percentage than students. The charts below count how many. Part of that is structural: a grade, a required course or a school building needs a teacher whether 30 students are in it or 12, and special-education services are set by each student’s individual plan, which a district must provide whatever its enrollment. Part of it is each district’s own staffing decisions. These figures cannot separate the two. So the page compares each district with what other districts did over the same years. The diagonal on the scatter, where teachers and students change by the same percentage, is drawn for reference. It is not a target, and neither is the fitted line.
- These are districts, not towns. Teachers are employed by districts. A town in a regional district shares that district’s figures with every other member town. Pick a town and every district that teaches its children lights up.
- “Teachers” is the state’s two teacher categories added together: “General Education – Teachers and Instructors” and “Special Education – Teachers and Instructors”, in full-time equivalent positions from the October 1 collection. The page ranks teachers only. Administrators and paraprofessionals are shown in their own section and in the table, by the state’s own categories, and are not ranked. All reported staff is not ranked either, because one of its categories, “Other Staff Providing Non-Instructional Services/Support”, moves by half or more from one year to the next in some districts.
- The start year changes the answer. Pick it with the buttons below. Federal pandemic relief paid for some positions from 2021 to 2024, which is one known influence on the most recent years.
Connecticut’s districts together: enrollment and staff, indexed
Totals across every district that reported the figure in every year from — to —, set to 100 in the first year. A line at 90 is 10% below where it started. Each line is summed over the districts that reported that category every year, and the legend gives the count. Pick a town to add the district or districts that teach its students.
Source: CT State Department of Education, EdSight FTE Staffing and Enrollment reports, October 1 collection, via administration.json (staffing.enrollment, staffing.groups.teachers_gen, teachers_sped, paras). Paraprofessionals are the state’s general- and special-education instructional-assistant categories together. Full-time equivalent positions, not people and not dollars.
Each district’s enrollment change against its teacher change
One point per district, — to —. Horizontal: the percentage change in October 1 enrollment. Vertical: the percentage change in teachers. A point on the grey diagonal changed teachers by the same percentage as students. A point above it lost a smaller share of teachers than of students, or added more. The purple dashed line is a least-squares fit through every point. It describes what districts did, and it is not a standard any district is held to.
Source: both axes from EdSight via administration.json: staffing.enrollment and teachers_gen + teachers_sped, same district, same two school years. Very small districts sit far out on both axes, because a change of a few students or one position is a large percentage of a small base.
How each staff group changed, beside enrollment
Percentage change in full-time equivalent positions, — to —, for each of the state’s staff categories, with enrollment at the top for comparison. Statewide bars add up every district that reported the category in both years. Pick a town to add the district or districts that teach its students. A bar beyond +100% is cut at the edge of the chart; hover it for the figure. “Other non-instructional staff” is left off, for the reason in the box at the top. Not ranked: the groups do different work and are counted on different scales.
Source: EdSight via administration.json: staffing.enrollment, staffing.groups.*, and staffing.paras_split.gen / .sped for the state’s “General Education” and “Special Education – Paraprofessional Instructional Assistants” categories. “Central-office administrators” is the state’s “Administrators, Coordinators and Department Chairs – District Central Office”; “School-level administrators” is “… – School Level”. A district with no row for a category in either year is left out of that bar, not counted as zero.
Change in students per teacher — every district
October 1 enrollment divided by teachers, — against —, as a percentage change. A negative figure means fewer students per teacher than at the start. Sorted lowest to highest. Students per teacher is not class size: it counts special-education teachers, and teachers who are not assigned a class of their own. Hover a bar for the district’s students per teacher in each year.
Top of the list: the largest falls — enrollment changed by a smaller percentage than teachers (students fell faster, or teachers grew faster). Bottom of the list: the largest rises — enrollment changed by a larger percentage than teachers (teachers fell faster, or students grew faster).
Source: EdSight via administration.json: staffing.enrollment ÷ (teachers_gen + teachers_sped) in each of the two years. Not a figure the state publishes.
The full table
Every district ranked on the change in students per teacher, with the counts behind it, where the statewide fitted line sits at the district’s enrollment change, and each staff category on its own. Type a town name to find the district that teaches its children.
How this ranking is made
Teachers = the state’s “General Education – Teachers and Instructors” plus “Special Education – Teachers and Instructors”, in full-time equivalent positions. Enrollment = the October 1 headcount for the same district and school year. Change = the later year divided by the start year, minus one. Students per teacher = enrollment ÷ teachers in each year.
- The fitted line is an ordinary least-squares fit of teacher change on enrollment change across every district plotted, each district counted once whatever its size. The table’s “difference from the line” is the district’s teacher change minus the line’s value at its enrollment change, in percentage points. The same question is also answered without a model, as the median teacher change in each quarter of districts sorted by enrollment change.
- The end year is the latest school year in which at least 100 districts report both figures. The start years offered are the earliest year in the file, ten years before the end year, and 2019-20, the last school year before the pandemic.
- A district is left out when either year lacks its enrollment or its general-education teacher count, or when it reports special-education teachers in one year and not the other, because adding a category to one end only would read as growth. The districts left out are named under the table.
- A one-year jump is flagged, not removed. When a district of 200 or more students changes enrollment by more than 20% in a single year inside the window, the table marks it. A jump that size usually means the grades or schools the district runs changed, and its long-run figures mix that change with everything else.
- Districts, not towns. Regional districts formed inside the window, such as Region 20 (2024-25), have no figures for the earlier years and are left out of any window that starts before they existed.
- Charter schools, magnet operators, the technical high school system and the regional education service centers are not on this page. It covers the districts that run a town’s public schools.
- Administrators and paraprofessionals are the state’s categories, not this site’s. The two administrator categories also count coordinators and department chairs, and a one-year step in either can be a reclassification rather than a hire; the state does not publish which. Paraprofessionals are split only as the state splits them, general and special education. No Connecticut source publishes staff by wage-and-hour (exempt or non-exempt) status, so that split is not available here.
- Nothing here measures what positions cost. The state publishes no salary data by district. A district can cut positions and spend more, or add positions and spend less.
The payload is built by Data/build_administration.py from the EdSight collections in Data/fetch_edsight_history.py. The measures are computed in your browser. METHODOLOGY.md carries the method.
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