Analyses
Fewest paraprofessionals per pupil in the group, then the most.
0.94 per hundred in-district pupils in FY13, 4.27 in FY25 — the largest move any staffing line in this archive makes.
lunenburgbudgetproject.org — written by the Lunenburg Budget Project, an independent tool for residents. Not affiliated with the Town of Lunenburg, the School Committee or the school district. The data this page is computed from: /data/the-paraprofessionals.json
What this report counts
Paraprofessional FTE as the state counts it, from two DESE files with two definitions — set beside NET general fund budget lines, which are dollars and not posts. The two are never divided by one another.
If you read nothing else
Rise in paraprofessionals for each hundred pupils, the biggest change in staffing
Lunenburg went from the lowest on the state’s comparison sheet to the highest.
Paraprofessionals are the biggest change in who Lunenburg’s schools employ: the state’s count went from 0.94 per hundred pupils in FY2013, the lowest of the 13 districts on the state’s own sheet, to 4.27 in FY2025, the highest. 14.8 full-time equivalents in FY2013 and 67.0 in FY2025 — a rise of 352.7% over years in which in-district enrolment fell 0.8%. Nothing else in this archive could have told a resident that: the town prints staff rosters every year and they carry names without hours, so the state’s file is the only place the size of the shift is visible.
what special education costs → · what other districts spend →
What it rests on DESE’s own staffing and enrolment files for Lunenburg and for the districts on its published comparison sheet, FY2009–FY2025. State figures, printed by the state — not the town’s rosters, which carry no hours, and not a budget line.
What it does not show Whether any of this is about children. An FTE count is staff: not a count of students with disabilities, not one-to-one assignments, not hours delivered. And DESE counts staff paid from grants, circuit breaker reimbursement and revolving funds alongside those the town appropriates, so this series cannot say who pays for the rise — DESE’s End of Year Financial Report, which separates spending by fund, is what would.
Rise in paraprofessional FTE the state does not code to special education, FY2020 to FY2025
The paraprofessional workforce grew while its special education half more than halved.
Two of the state’s files count Lunenburg’s paraprofessionals and they move in opposite directions. All programmes: 57.0 full-time equivalents to 67.0. Special education: 44.0 to 20.0. The difference between them goes from 13.0 to 47.0 — a rise of 34.0. That is a 54.5% fall in the special education count against a 17.5% rise in the all-programmes one, over years in which the number of children with a special education plan went from 244 to 238. It is not one noisy year: the special education line falls at every one of the 5 steps and the difference rises at every one. WHAT IT IS NOT is a measurement of anybody moving jobs — these are two DESE files with two definitions, and subtracting one from the other assumes the second sits inside the first, which nothing published says. A district reassigning paraprofessionals, a district recoding them, and DESE changing what its special education table counts all produce this shape.
how many children are on a plan → · what special education costs →
What it rests on Two DESE files over the years both publish: the district comparison sheet’s all-programmes paraprofessional FTE, and the special education staff table, whose rate is recomputed from its own FTE and child count on every build and published only where it reproduces. The difference between them is derived here and is labelled as derived.
What it does not show That anybody was reassigned, hired or cut. Three readings fit these numbers equally well and this archive cannot separate them: paraprofessionals moved onto general education assignments; the same people were recoded; or DESE changed what its special education staff table counts. Nor does it show who pays — the state counts staff on grants, circuit breaker reimbursement and revolving funds exactly like staff the town appropriates.
Rise in what the schools budget for special education paraprofessionals
Special education teacher lines rose a fifth as fast. Inside this budget, the money went to paraprofessionals.
Inside special education the money went to paraprofessionals: those 5 budget lines rose 108.4% over FY2017 to FY2025, while the 5 special education teacher lines rose 20.1%. $597,464 to $1,244,894 against $1,537,583 to $1,846,499, both panels read at the restated stage over the 9 years both of them cover. These are NET general fund lines — what the town has to raise after grants, circuit breaker reimbursement and revolving funds have paid their share — so the same rise appears whether the district added paraprofessionals or a grant that had been paying for them ended and the cost landed on the town. Which of the two it is matters: this is the line this project’s own in-district special education escalator is built on.
what special education costs → · what happens when a grant stops →
What it rests on Two panels of five budget lines each, out of the district’s own budget books at one stage across their whole run, compared only over the years both panels report. The paraprofessional panel is reconciled against the district’s own five-school aggregation of the same figures, and the comparison is published in this payload rather than swallowed. A budget book restating itself is a document the district assembled, not an accounting printout.
What it does not show That anybody was hired. A budget line is dollars: not a post, not a person, not an hour — a line rising and a line paying more for the same people are the same number on the page. Nor does it show what special education cost, because these lines are net of every fund but the general fund.
Those are the answers this report could reach from the documents behind it. If the one you came for is not among them, ask us — no name or email needed.
Lunenburg went from the fewest paraprofessionals per pupil to the most
DESE publishes paraprofessional FTE for Lunenburg and for every district on its own comparison sheet. In FY13 Lunenburg reported 0.94 per 100 in-district pupils — the lowest of the 9, and below every one of them. It was last of 9 for 1 straight years, FY13 to FY13. In FY25 it reported 4.27, the highest of the group.
The V is Lunenburg’s alone. No comparison district falls below 0.00 in any year of the series. That rules out a change in how the state counts paraprofessionals, which would have moved every district at once. It does not rule out a change in how Lunenburg reports them.
Paraprofessional FTE per 100 in-district pupils. Every district on DESE’s own comparison sheet.
Lunenburg, per year
| Year | Para FTE | Per 100 pupils | Rank | Highest in group |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY09 | 46.4 | 2.65 | 2 of 9 | Ashburnham-Westminster 2.66 |
| FY10 | 39.9 | 2.32 | 5 of 9 | Groton-Dunstable 2.86 |
| FY11 | 24.1 | 1.45 | 8 of 9 | Ayer 3.41 |
| FY12 | 24.1 | 1.47 | 8 of 9 | Ayer Shirley School District 3.54 |
| FY13 | 14.8 | 0.94 | 9 of 9 | Ayer Shirley School District 3.26 |
| FY14 | 16.2 | 1.03 | 8 of 9 | Ayer Shirley School District 3.87 |
| FY15 | 31.0 | 1.98 | 8 of 9 | Ayer Shirley School District 4.32 |
| FY16 | 51.0 | 3.25 | 2 of 9 | Ayer Shirley School District 3.63 |
| FY17 | 59.5 | 3.67 | 1 of 9 | Lunenburg 3.67 |
| FY18 | 51.0 | 3.15 | 2 of 9 | Ayer Shirley School District 3.26 |
| FY19 | 53.0 | 3.20 | 1 of 13 | Lunenburg 3.20 |
| FY20 | 57.0 | 3.45 | 1 of 13 | Lunenburg 3.45 |
| FY21 | 59.5 | 3.78 | 1 of 11 | Lunenburg 3.78 |
| FY22 | 55.5 | 3.47 | 2 of 11 | Ayer Shirley School District 3.74 |
| FY23 | 59.0 | 3.77 | 2 of 13 | Ayer Shirley School District 4.00 |
| FY24 | 66.0 | 4.18 | 1 of 13 | Lunenburg 4.18 |
| FY25 | 67.0 | 4.27 | 1 of 13 | Lunenburg 4.27 |
What this does not show
Whether any of this is about children. An FTE count is staff. It is not a count of students with disabilities, of one-to-one assignments, or of hours delivered. Two districts with the same ratio can be doing entirely different things.
Who pays. DESE’s FTE count includes staff paid from grants, circuit breaker reimbursement and revolving funds. The town’s budget lines do not. So the FTE series and the dollar series below are not two views of one number and must not be divided into each other.
That the trough is real. FY13’s 14.8 FTE is what the state published. Whether Lunenburg employed that few paraprofessionals, or classified them somewhere else that year, is not decidable from this sheet.
A possible explanation — nothing here tests it
A district that cuts paraprofessional posts in a hard budget year and rebuilds them afterwards would produce exactly this shape. So would a district that kept the same people and changed which fund or which category they were reported under. So would one whose special education population changed. The three fit the same seventeen numbers equally well, and this series cannot separate them.
What would settle it: DESE’s staffing report broken out by funding source, and the district’s End of Year Financial Report, which separates spending by fund. Both would say whether the rise is posts added or grant-funded posts moving onto the general fund. Neither is currently in this archive.
General education and special education — the paraprofessional count splits
Two of the state’s files count Lunenburg’s paraprofessionals over FY20–FY25, and they move in opposite directions. All programmes: 57.0 full-time equivalents to 67.0. Coded to special education: 44.0 to 20.0 — falling at every one of the 5 year-steps, over a group of children that went from 244 to 238.
FY20–FY25. Two DESE files, one axis, both in full-time equivalents. The dotted line is one subtracted from the other and is DERIVED — it is not a figure either file prints.
And here is the thing this page has to say out loud, because it holds both halves. Over almost exactly these years the district’s budget for special education paraprofessionals rose +108% — that section is further down this page — while the paraprofessional FTE the state codes to special education more than halved. Those two facts are not in contradiction and they are also not divisible: the budget line is a net general-fund appropriation and the FTE is a state coding of assignments, so dividing one by the other would produce a cost per employee that is wrong twice over. What can be said is that the money and the coded staffing move in opposite directions, and that nothing published says why.
Both counts, and the difference between them
| Year | All programmes (FTE) | Special education (FTE) | The difference | Children on a plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY20 | 57.0 | 44.0 | 13.0 | 244 |
| FY21 | 59.5 | 41.5 | 18.0 | 249 |
| FY22 | 55.5 | 32.5 | 23.0 | 217 |
| FY23 | 59.0 | 24.0 | 35.0 | 230 |
| FY24 | 66.0 | 23.0 | 43.0 | 224 |
| FY25 | 67.0 | 20.0 | 47.0 | 238 |
What this does not show
That anybody was reassigned. These are two DESE files with two definitions. The difference between them is computed here and called IMPLIED, never “general education”, because nothing published says the second file’s universe sits inside the first’s. A district moving paraprofessionals onto general education assignments, the same people being recoded, and DESE changing what its special education staff table counts all produce this shape, and this archive cannot separate them.
Whether the teaching side split the same way. It cannot be read here. DESE’s programme-area file reports a fall in Lunenburg’s special education TEACHER FTE that no staffing decision produces, while the district total holds flat. That is a registered gap rather than a finding, and it is drawn — rather than hidden — on who works in each school, beside the other two ways the state splits teaching posts.
Who pays for any of them. Rule of this whole page: DESE counts staff on grants, circuit breaker reimbursement and revolving funds exactly like staff the town appropriates, and the budget line the town votes is net of all of them. A line rising because a grant ended looks identical to a line rising because the district grew — and the district’s own special education paraprofessional line is what this project’s in-district escalator rests on.
Inside special education, the money went to paraprofessionals, not to teachers
Two panels of five budget lines each, read from the district’s own documents at the restated stage across their whole run, over the 9 years both of them cover. Special education paraprofessional lines moved +108% — from $597,464 to $1,244,894. Special education teacher lines moved +20%, from $1,537,583 to $1,846,499.
Both series set to 100 in FY17. The dollars themselves are in the table.
Both panels, restated stage, as printed
| Year | Special education paraprofessionals | Special education teachers |
|---|---|---|
| FY17 | $597,464 | $1,537,583 |
| FY18 | $641,635 | $1,492,886 |
| FY19 | $672,872 | $1,506,433 |
| FY20 | $879,279 | $1,617,268 |
| FY21 | $920,345 | $1,723,153 |
| FY22 | $1,021,005 | $1,777,239 |
| FY23 | $1,018,072 | $1,809,200 |
| FY24 | $1,005,949 | $1,801,037 |
| FY25 | $1,244,894 | $1,846,499 |
The paraprofessional panel runs from FY14 and the teacher panel from FY17; the comparison above uses only the 9 years both cover. Reading a 12-year percentage against a 9-year one is the like-for-like error wearing a different coat.
What this does not show
That anybody was hired. A budget line is dollars. It is not a post, not a person and not an hour. The line rising and the line paying more for the same people are the same number on the page.
What special education cost. These are net general-fund lines. Circuit breaker reimbursement, IDEA grant money and revolving funds pay for real staff and appear in none of them, so a year where a grant ended looks identical to a year where the district added people.
That the two panels are comparable in kind. They are two sets of five lines from the same workbook, which makes them comparable as budget lines. It does not make a paraprofessional dollar and a teacher dollar the same unit of anything.
Three more staffing lines, for scale
The same treatment for every other staffing panel where a fixed set of lines reports in every year of its run. Each is read at the restated stage; none of them is a headcount.
$366,965 in FY14 to $1,244,894 in FY25 · 5 lines · from budget_figure
$1,537,583 in FY17 to $1,846,499 in FY25 · 5 lines · from sped_teacher_history
$201,879 in FY17 to $272,057 in FY25 · 5 lines · from budget_figure · 3 earlier years dropped, because not every line in the panel reports in them
$82,262 in FY14 to $105,171 in FY25 · 5 lines · from budget_figure
What is wrong with this data, stated
Found by a rule in the generator rather than written down, so the figures move when the extraction improves instead of going quietly stale.
The same staff, counted two other ways
Did staffing go up?
Teacher FTE over a window you move yourself. The sign of that answer is a property of the years somebody picks, and the count of how many spans give each answer is on the page.
Who works in each school
The names the town printed, building by building, and the one place the difference between a person and a post has a number attached to it.
What the town said about this, and how much of the archive could be read
Every quote used anywhere in this staffing work is re-read out of the archive on each build and the build refuses to write if one is no longer verbatim there. These are the terms searched — in the town’s vocabulary rather than ours.
Searched 8,899 of the 12,015 meeting documents this archive holds (74%), covering 2009-01-05 to 2026-11-17. The other 3,116 carry no text a search can match — 3,096 of them are image scans awaiting OCR. An empty result above is a statement about what can be read, never about what was said.
What this page cannot say
- Who pays for any of it. DESE counts staff paid from grants, circuit breaker reimbursement and revolving funds alongside those the town appropriates, so the arrival and the ending of the federal ESSER money — thirteen positions by the Finance Committee’s own account — are both invisible in this series.
- Whether Lunenburg’s paraprofessionals moved out of special education or were recoded. The state’s all-programmes count rises over the same years its special education count more than halves, and the two are different files with different definitions. A reassignment, a recoding and a change in what the state’s table counts all fit.
What would close these
DESE’s End of Year Financial Report, Schedule 1, as Lunenburg files it, which separates spending by fund and is the document that would say which fund pays which post — and without which a line rising because the district added staff cannot be told from a line rising because a grant that had been paying for them ended. Every limit on this page is also a row in what we cannot answer, which is the single registry the records request reads from.
The documents behind this
dese-teacher-data.xlsx
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
Teacher FTE by district, by school and by core academic subject, with the state’s own students-per-teacher figure. FY2008–FY2026.
table dese_teacher_subject · 26.0 MB
sha256 4fbe81d65aee0bff…
dese-enrollment-by-grade.xlsx
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
Enrolment by grade and by school, with students with disabilities, English learners, high needs and low income. FY1992–FY2026; the need measures start later and one of them changes definition twice.
table dese_enrollment · 13.4 MB
sha256 a2fb23dea70ce67d…
dese-sped-program-characteristics.xlsx
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
What the children with a special education plan are — disability, placement, grade span — and the special education STAFF table, whose paraprofessional row is the only one in it that reproduces from its own printed FTE and child count in every year.
table dese_sped_program · 5.4 MB
sha256 417435bddfcac3eb…
Where every figure on this page comes from
The state’s FTE and enrollment
17 years, FY09–FY25, LEA 01620000, 14 districts. Every measure reconciles against DESE’s own printed totals (161 yes).
sources/state-dese/radar-district-comparison.xlsx
The special education staff table
6 years, FY20–FY25. Nothing in that file’s headers says which column holds the FTE; the only thing that establishes it is that the printed rate reproduces from the two, which is recomputed on every build — 18 rows checked, 0 not published because they did not reproduce.
The dollars
4 panels, restated stage throughout. Each panel is a fixed set of lines reporting in every year of its run, so a sum across years measures the lines and not the coverage.
This page’s own data file
Everything above is read at build time from sources/data/lunenburg.db — staff_roster_entries, role_classification, dese_measure, budget_figure, report_gross_wages by scripts/build_staffing_charts.py and served as one static file. Nothing is typed into a sentence.
The one number nobody publishes
Which fund pays which post. The town publishes names without FTE or funding; the state publishes FTE without funding; the budget publishes dollars net of every fund but one. Any question of the form “did the town take on staff a grant used to pay for” needs all three joined, and no document in this archive joins them.
Every other report
Every analysis this project has written, in one index, is at reports.