Analyses

Who works in each of the four schools, FY11 to FY25.

3,815 names, beside the children and the teaching posts the state counts in the same buildings — three instruments, never added together.

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/who-works-in-each-school.json

What this report counts

Names the town PRINTED, one row per name, per school, per annual report — set beside DESE’s FTE for teaching posts and DESE’s headcount of people. Three instruments, never divided by one another.

3,815
names the town printed on a school staff roster, across 15 annual town reports, FY11–FY25
123 people
teaching in Lunenburg in FY23, holding 112.8 full-time equivalent posts between them
0.92 FTE each
posts per teaching person, averaged across the whole job class — two people at three quarters and one full-timer beside one half-timer give the same figure. It was 0.95 in FY21
25 of 54
school-years, of those with both records, in which the town printed fewer teaching names than the state counts teaching posts — which document is short is not established
266 of 3,651
printed titles no classification rule recognised — 7.3%, counted as unrecognised rather than filed under “other”

If you read nothing else

01123people, not full-time posts

Teachers the state counted as people in FY2023, against 112.8 full-time equivalent posts

A roster counts heads and DESE counts posts, so the same staff give two different numbers.

The state publishes both counts and they are not the same count: 123 people teaching in Lunenburg in FY2023, holding 112.8 full-time equivalent posts between them — 10.2 FTE fewer than there are bodies. The average teacher on that return holds 0.92 of a post, down from 0.95 in FY2021. Paraprofessionals are the other way about: 59 people and 59.0 FTE in FY2023, so almost every one of them is counted whole. The gap matters because it decides which instrument answers which question — the town’s own printed rosters are a headcount and cannot be set beside an FTE series, and this is the size of the error that would be. On headcount for each hundred pupils Lunenburg is 5 of the 6 districts in this file for teachers and 2 of 6 for paraprofessionals, which is a smaller group than the comparison sheet the rest of this page uses and is not the same ranking.

what other districts spend → · what we cannot answer →

What it rests on DESE’s educator headcount and retention file, FY2021–FY2023, at the row the file prints as its own total — read beside DESE’s published FTE for the same district and the same years. Three years is what exists; the span is on every figure drawn from it.

What it does not show Who is part-time. A share is an average over a whole job class, and one full-timer beside one half-timer and two people at three quarters give the same figure. Nothing published gives the distribution, and nothing gives the funding source for a single one of these people. Nor does a headcount say a post was filled all year: it is a return for one point in the school year, like the rosters.

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.

The four schools, as the town printed them

Every name the town printed on that school’s staff roster in its annual report, grouped, beside the children the state counted in the same building and the teaching posts the state counts there. Three separate instruments, kept apart: nothing here is added to anything else, and the arrows are the change over 3 years and nothing more — not a hire and not a cut.

4 schools printed a roster in FY25

Lunenburg High

grades 9–12 · FY25

452
children
state count, 1 October
64
names on the roster
town’s annual report
7.1
children per name printed
every adult printed, kitchen and custodial included — not a class size
36.5
teaching FTE
teachers only — see below
Who teaches38 ▼6
  • Teachers38 ▲3
Who supports children16 ▼4
  • Paraprofessionals11 ▼3
  • Counsellors4 ▲1
  • Nurses1 —
Who runs the building4 ▼3
  • Principals and administrators3 —
  • Office staff1 ▼3
Who keeps the building running5 ▼1
  • Custodial and maintenance2 ▼1
  • Kitchen3 —
Printed titles we could not classify1 ▼2

    ▲▼ is the change since FY23 — 3 years, names against names.

    Teaching posts, full-time equivalent (the state)
    • General education36.3
    • Special education0.2
    • All teaching posts36.5
    The same 36.5, split by grade band in the state’s other file
    • Grades 9 to 1223.1
    • Coded to no single band13.4

    Teachers only. No full-time equivalent is published for a paraprofessional, an administrator, a nurse, a counsellor, a custodian or a kitchen post at any school — so the difference between 36.5 and the roster count above is not part-timers. 452 children against 36.5 teaching posts is 12.4 per post — the state’s own arithmetic, and not a class size either.

    Two counts of the same teachers. The town printed 38 teaching names here; the state counts 36.5 teaching posts. 1.04 names per post, against 1.04 across every school-year — a headcount above an FTE is ordinary, because a teacher can hold part of a post. Teachers only: no full-time equivalent is published for any other kind of post at a school, so nothing else on this panel can be checked this way.

    Lunenburg Middle School

    grades 6–8 · FY25

    382
    children
    state count, 1 October
    49
    names on the roster
    town’s annual report
    7.8
    children per name printed
    every adult printed, kitchen and custodial included — not a class size
    25.1
    teaching FTE
    teachers only — see below
    Who teaches21 —
    • Teachers13 ▼2
    • Specialist teachers7 ▲1
    • Librarians1 ▲1
    Who supports children17 ▲4
    • Paraprofessionals11 ▲5
    • Counsellors3 —
    • School psychologists1 —
    • Speech therapists1 —
    • Nurses1 —
    Who runs the building6 —
    • Principals and administrators5 —
    • Office staff1 —
    Who keeps the building running2 —
    • Custodial and maintenance1 —
    • Kitchen1 ▲1
    Printed titles we could not classify3 ▲3

      ▲▼ is the change since FY23 — 3 years, names against names.

      Teaching posts, full-time equivalent (the state)
      • General education25.1
      • Special education0.0
      • All teaching posts25.1

      A zero here is a CODING count, not a count of who works in this building. The state’s special education teacher FTE for Lunenburg falls from 18.5 to 2.0 across this file while the district total holds flat, and nothing published says why.

      The same 25.1, split by grade band in the state’s other file
      • Grades 6 to 824.8
      • Coded to no single band0.3

      Teachers only. No full-time equivalent is published for a paraprofessional, an administrator, a nurse, a counsellor, a custodian or a kitchen post at any school — so the difference between 25.1 and the roster count above is not part-timers. 382 children against 25.1 teaching posts is 15.2 per post — the state’s own arithmetic, and not a class size either.

      Two counts of the same teachers. The town printed 21 teaching names here; the state counts 25.1 teaching posts. That is fewer names than posts, so the two documents cannot both be complete counts of the same people. Which one is short is not established: our reading of the printed page, what the town chose to print, or an assignment the state counts here whose holder the town printed under another school. Teachers only: no full-time equivalent is published for any other kind of post at a school, so nothing else on this panel can be checked this way.

      Lunenburg Primary School

      grades PK–2 · FY25

      374
      children
      state count, 1 October
      73
      names on the roster
      town’s annual report
      5.1
      children per name printed
      every adult printed, kitchen and custodial included — not a class size
      23.5
      teaching FTE
      teachers only — see below
      Who teaches25 ▼8
      • Teachers20 ▼4
      • Specialist teachers4 ▼5
      • Librarians1 ▲1
      Who supports children27 ▼1
      • Paraprofessionals20 ▼2
      • School psychologists1 —
      • Social workers1 ▲1
      • Speech therapists2 —
      • Occupational and physical therapists2 ▲1
      • Nurses1 —
      Who runs the building4 —
      • Principals and administrators4 ▲1
      Who keeps the building running5 ▲2
      • Custodial and maintenance2 —
      • Kitchen3 ▲2
      Printed titles we could not classify12 ▼4

        ▲▼ is the change since FY23 — 3 years, names against names.

        Teaching posts, full-time equivalent (the state)
        • General education21.5
        • Special education2.0
        • All teaching posts23.5
        The same 23.5, split by grade band in the state’s other file
        • Pre-K to grade 221.4
        • Coded to no single band2.1

        Teachers only. No full-time equivalent is published for a paraprofessional, an administrator, a nurse, a counsellor, a custodian or a kitchen post at any school — so the difference between 23.5 and the roster count above is not part-timers. 374 children against 23.5 teaching posts is 15.9 per post — the state’s own arithmetic, and not a class size either.

        Two counts of the same teachers. The town printed 25 teaching names here; the state counts 23.5 teaching posts. 1.06 names per post, against 1.04 across every school-year — a headcount above an FTE is ordinary, because a teacher can hold part of a post. Teachers only: no full-time equivalent is published for any other kind of post at a school, so nothing else on this panel can be checked this way.

        Turkey Hill Elementary School

        grades 3–5 · FY25

        345
        children
        state count, 1 October
        64
        names on the roster
        town’s annual report
        5.4
        children per name printed
        every adult printed, kitchen and custodial included — not a class size
        19.0
        teaching FTE
        teachers only — see below
        Who teaches26 —
        • Teachers25 ▲1
        • Librarians1 —
        Who supports children17 ▼5
        • Paraprofessionals10 ▼6
        • School psychologists1 —
        • Social workers1 —
        • Speech therapists2 ▲1
        • Occupational and physical therapists2 ▲1
        • Nurses1 —
        Who runs the building5 ▲5
        • Principals and administrators4 ▲4
        • Office staff1 ▲1
        Who keeps the building running10 ▲1
        • Custodial and maintenance6 —
        • Kitchen4 ▲1
        Printed titles we could not classify6 ▲4

          ▲▼ is the change since FY23 — 3 years, names against names.

          Teaching posts, full-time equivalent (the state)
          • General education19.0
          • Special education0.0
          • All teaching posts19.0

          A zero here is a CODING count, not a count of who works in this building. The state’s special education teacher FTE for Lunenburg falls from 18.5 to 2.0 across this file while the district total holds flat, and nothing published says why.

          The same 19.0, split by grade band in the state’s other file
          • Grades 3 to 518.0
          • Coded to no single band1.0

          Teachers only. No full-time equivalent is published for a paraprofessional, an administrator, a nurse, a counsellor, a custodian or a kitchen post at any school — so the difference between 19.0 and the roster count above is not part-timers. 345 children against 19.0 teaching posts is 18.2 per post — the state’s own arithmetic, and not a class size either.

          Two counts of the same teachers. The town printed 26 teaching names here; the state counts 19.0 teaching posts. 1.37 names per post, against 1.04 across every school-year — a headcount above an FTE is ordinary, because a teacher can hold part of a post. Teachers only: no full-time equivalent is published for any other kind of post at a school, so nothing else on this panel can be checked this way.

          Every school and every category, FY25

          SchoolGradesChildrenNames printedCategoryNamesChange since 3 years earlier
          Lunenburg High9–1245264Teachers38+3
          Lunenburg High9–1245264Paraprofessionals11-3
          Lunenburg High9–1245264Counsellors4+1
          Lunenburg High9–1245264Nurses10
          Lunenburg High9–1245264Principals and administrators30
          Lunenburg High9–1245264Office staff1-3
          Lunenburg High9–1245264Custodial and maintenance2-1
          Lunenburg High9–1245264Kitchen30
          Lunenburg High9–1245264Printed title we could not classify1-2
          Lunenburg Middle School6–838249Teachers13-2
          Lunenburg Middle School6–838249Specialist teachers7+1
          Lunenburg Middle School6–838249Librarians1+1
          Lunenburg Middle School6–838249Paraprofessionals11+5
          Lunenburg Middle School6–838249Counsellors30
          Lunenburg Middle School6–838249School psychologists10
          Lunenburg Middle School6–838249Speech therapists10
          Lunenburg Middle School6–838249Nurses10
          Lunenburg Middle School6–838249Principals and administrators50
          Lunenburg Middle School6–838249Office staff10
          Lunenburg Middle School6–838249Custodial and maintenance10
          Lunenburg Middle School6–838249Kitchen1+1
          Lunenburg Middle School6–838249Printed title we could not classify3+3
          Lunenburg Primary SchoolPK–237473Teachers20-4
          Lunenburg Primary SchoolPK–237473Specialist teachers4-5
          Lunenburg Primary SchoolPK–237473Librarians1+1
          Lunenburg Primary SchoolPK–237473Paraprofessionals20-2
          Lunenburg Primary SchoolPK–237473School psychologists10
          Lunenburg Primary SchoolPK–237473Social workers1+1
          Lunenburg Primary SchoolPK–237473Speech therapists20
          Lunenburg Primary SchoolPK–237473Occupational and physical therapists2+1
          Lunenburg Primary SchoolPK–237473Nurses10
          Lunenburg Primary SchoolPK–237473Principals and administrators4+1
          Lunenburg Primary SchoolPK–237473Custodial and maintenance20
          Lunenburg Primary SchoolPK–237473Kitchen3+2
          Lunenburg Primary SchoolPK–237473Printed title we could not classify12-4
          Turkey Hill Elementary School3–534564Teachers25+1
          Turkey Hill Elementary School3–534564Librarians10
          Turkey Hill Elementary School3–534564Paraprofessionals10-6
          Turkey Hill Elementary School3–534564School psychologists10
          Turkey Hill Elementary School3–534564Social workers10
          Turkey Hill Elementary School3–534564Speech therapists2+1
          Turkey Hill Elementary School3–534564Occupational and physical therapists2+1
          Turkey Hill Elementary School3–534564Nurses10
          Turkey Hill Elementary School3–534564Principals and administrators4+4
          Turkey Hill Elementary School3–534564Office staff1+1
          Turkey Hill Elementary School3–534564Custodial and maintenance60
          Turkey Hill Elementary School3–534564Kitchen4+1
          Turkey Hill Elementary School3–534564Printed title we could not classify6+4

          Two things to know before quoting a panel.

          • A roster is not a staffing level. It carries no full-time equivalent, so a 0.4 music teacher and a full-timer are one name each; no funding source, which is the question that decides whether the town pays for a post; and no date within the year.
          • The adults and the children may be a year apart. Nothing on a roster page states its date. 3 sentences across the 15 reports name a fall and a student count; matched against the state’s October enrolment for the same school, 2 of them are closer to the year after the report’s own fiscal year and 1 to the year on the cover. So the panels pair each roster with the fiscal year it is labelled with, and that pairing is not established.

          One thing that would close most of this. A date on the roster, and the word the town already uses for it — the district files a staff return to the state every 1 October, so the roster it prints in the annual report could say which return it is. That is a line of text in a document the town already publishes, and it would turn every panel here from a bound into a count.

          Two of the state’s files agree about teaching posts, and about when the buildings changed

          The teaching FTE on each panel is reached twice. DESE splits a school’s teaching posts by programme in one file and by grade band in another, collected separately — and the two totals agree in 81 of the 81 school-years both publish. The build refuses to write if that stops being true.

          The same two files also settle the reorganisation without either knowing about the other. Lunenburg High carries teaching posts in the grades 6–8 band in FY13–FY16 and in no other year — exactly the years the enrolment file says grade 8 was in that building. Across every school, band and year, the teacher file and the enrolment file agree about which grades a building held in 287 of 288 cases. That is why scrubbing the selector back to FY16 shows the primary school holding grades PK–3 and the high school holding 8–12: the buildings really did change, and both instruments say so.

          Two organisations counting the same teachers, and where they disagree

          The town prints names; the state publishes full-time-equivalent teaching posts. They come from different records kept for different purposes and they overlap on one quantity, so they can be set against each other — and this is the only independent check the archive has on either of them at school level. A headcount above an FTE is ordinary: the state counts 123 teachers in Lunenburg holding 112.8 posts between them, so the average teacher holds 0.92 of one. What is worth marking is the other direction.

          In 25 of the 54 school-years with both, the town printed fewer names than the state counts posts — which says the two documents cannot both be complete counts of the same people. It is not spread evenly: middle in 9 of 9, passios in 1 of 1, high in 8 of 15, turkey hill in 5 of 14, primary in 2 of 15. The middle school and the high school are the two that share a building. Which document is short is not established. Our reading of a scanned page, what the town chose to print, and an assignment the state counts at one of two co-located schools whose holder the town printed under the other all fit, and nothing here separates them.

          The same instrument, pointed at the year the town printed two rosters. DESE’s teaching FTE for turkey hill is 22.0 in FY23, 21.9 in FY24, 19.0 in FY25 — flat across it. The two printed rosters hold 29 and 34 teaching names, which is 1.32 and 1.55 names per post; added together they would be 2.88, against a highest of 1.63 in every other school-year this archive holds. That is why the two rosters are shown apart and never summed.

          Both counts, every school-year that has both

          YearSchoolTeaching names printedTeaching FTE (state)Names per postFewer names than posts
          FY11Lunenburg High2336.50.63yes
          FY11Thomas C Passios Elem922.40.40yes
          FY11Lunenburg Primary School1622.60.71yes
          FY11Turkey Hill Middle3320.81.59
          FY12Lunenburg High3937.91.03
          FY12Lunenburg Primary School3122.31.39
          FY12Turkey Hill Middle2828.70.98yes
          FY13Lunenburg High4046.70.86yes
          FY13Lunenburg Primary School3126.51.17
          FY13Turkey Hill Middle2929.90.97yes
          FY14Lunenburg High4444.40.99yes
          FY14Lunenburg Primary School3327.91.18
          FY14Turkey Hill Middle3128.31.10
          FY15Lunenburg High4344.80.96yes
          FY15Lunenburg Primary School4728.91.63
          FY15Turkey Hill Middle3128.01.11
          FY16Lunenburg High3344.60.74yes
          FY16Lunenburg Primary School2927.81.04
          FY16Turkey Hill Middle3232.20.99yes
          FY17Lunenburg High3035.70.84yes
          FY17Lunenburg Middle School1525.90.58yes
          FY17Lunenburg Primary School2923.51.23
          FY17Turkey Hill Elementary School3327.01.22
          FY18Lunenburg High3634.61.04
          FY18Lunenburg Middle School2128.90.73yes
          FY18Lunenburg Primary School3125.01.24
          FY18Turkey Hill Elementary School3424.51.39
          FY19Lunenburg High3532.01.09
          FY19Lunenburg Middle School2128.50.74yes
          FY19Lunenburg Primary School2723.51.15
          FY19Turkey Hill Elementary School2525.50.98yes
          FY20Lunenburg High3632.21.12
          FY20Lunenburg Middle School2027.70.72yes
          FY20Lunenburg Primary School3524.01.46
          FY20Turkey Hill Elementary School2822.61.24
          FY21Lunenburg High2930.80.94yes
          FY21Lunenburg Middle School2127.30.77yes
          FY21Lunenburg Primary School2725.21.07
          FY21Turkey Hill Elementary School2123.90.88yes
          FY22Lunenburg High2733.50.81yes
          FY22Lunenburg Middle School2829.10.96yes
          FY22Lunenburg Primary School3323.91.38
          FY22Turkey Hill Elementary School3423.61.44
          FY23Lunenburg High4435.81.23
          FY23Lunenburg Middle School2127.10.77yes
          FY23Lunenburg Primary School3326.71.24
          FY23Turkey Hill Elementary School2622.01.18
          FY24Lunenburg High4137.01.11
          FY24Lunenburg Middle School2427.70.87yes
          FY24Lunenburg Primary School1826.50.68yes
          FY25Lunenburg High3836.51.04
          FY25Lunenburg Middle School2125.10.84yes
          FY25Lunenburg Primary School2523.51.06
          FY25Turkey Hill Elementary School2619.01.37

          Three different quantities are on this page, and only one of them is a count of people. A fourth — dollars — is deliberately on another page.

          • Names the town printed. 3815 of them, across 15 annual town reports, FY11–FY25. A roster carries no FTE, so a 0.4 music teacher and a full-timer are one name each; no funding source; and no date within the year.
          • FTE the state published. 17 years of it, FY09–FY25, from DESE rather than from the town. This is the only full-time-equivalent count in the archive.
          • Headcount the state published. 3 years of it, FY21–FY23 — people, counted once each, by job classification. It is the only count of PEOPLE here, it is short, and it still carries no funding source.
          • Dollars, which are not here. Net general-fund budget lines: a line is what the town has to raise after state aid, grants, fees and reimbursement have paid theirs, so a line can rise because a grant ended and nothing else changed. They are drawn on the paraprofessionals, apart from everything on this page, for exactly the reason in the paragraph below.

          Nothing on this page divides a dollar by a person. Dollars over FTE looks like a cost per employee and is not one: the numerator leaves out every fund but the general fund, and the denominator counts the staff those funds pay for. The one division the page does make is headcount into FTE, which is two counts of staff from the same publisher and gives the average share of a post — and it is labelled as that everywhere it appears.

          The programme-area split, drawn because refusing to draw it is how it stayed unexamined

          Why DESE special education teacher FTE falls from 18.5 to 2.0 while total teacher FTE holds flat

          YearGeneral educationSpecial educationCareer and technicalEnglish learnerTotal
          FY08101.018.50.00.0119.5
          FY09103.217.00.00.0120.2
          FY10100.420.00.00.0120.4
          FY1186.813.71.40.4102.3
          FY1299.813.80.80.0114.4
          FY1393.39.20.60.0103.0
          FY1492.08.00.60.0100.6
          FY1592.78.50.50.0101.6
          FY1692.810.80.60.5104.7
          FY17106.65.50.00.0112.1
          FY18108.66.50.00.0115.1
          FY19104.06.50.00.0110.5
          FY20101.95.50.00.0107.4
          FY21103.75.00.00.0108.7
          FY22106.84.50.00.0111.3
          FY23110.62.20.00.0112.8
          FY24113.01.00.00.0114.0
          FY25102.92.20.00.0105.0
          FY26101.42.00.00.0103.4

          People, not posts — the one count that is a headcount

          Everything above counts full-time equivalents. The state publishes a headcount too — people, counted once each, by job classification — for 3 years, FY21–FY23. That is short, and it is the only place in this archive where the difference between a person and a post has a number attached to it.

          In FY23 the state counted 123 people teaching in Lunenburg, holding 112.8 full-time equivalent posts between them: the average teacher holds 0.92 of a post, down from 0.95 in FY21. Paraprofessionals are the other way about — 59 people and 59.0 FTE, so almost every one of them is counted whole.

          People the state countedFull-time equivalent posts
          FY21 teachersFY21 parasFY22 teachersFY22 parasFY23 teachersFY23 paras03570105140

          FY21–FY23, the only years the state publishes a headcount. Two DESE files; the gap between the pair is how much of a post the average member of that group holds.

          People and posts, side by side

          YearTeachers (people)Teacher FTEShare of a post eachParaprofessionals (people)Paraprofessional FTEShare of a post each
          FY21114108.70.956059.50.99
          FY22117111.30.955655.50.99
          FY23123112.80.925959.01.00

          Everyone the state counted, by job classification

          Headcount, FY21–FY23

          Job classificationFY21FY22FY23New hires, latestRetained, latest
          Administrator141719not published82.4%
          Other - Licensed141614not published56.3%
          Other - Non-Licensed373938not published79.5%
          Paraprofessional6056591466.1%
          Teacher1141171231088.9%

          A headcount can say one more thing an FTE count cannot: who stayed. Of the paraprofessionals the state counted in FY23, 66.1% were retained from the year before, and 14 of the 59 were new. The School Committee voted a budget transfer for exactly this in the same period.

          “$19,539 transfer to reconcile accounts for transfer’s associated with paraprofessionals, from resignations, internal transfers and new hires”

          School Committee · minutes · 2023-11-01 · our copy · the town’s

          A budget transfer voted in one meeting, for one job class, naming three kinds of movement at once. The state’s own retention file says only 66% of the paraprofessionals counted the year before were still there — this is what that number looks like inside the budget.

          Against the districts in the same file

          Headcount for each hundred pupils, FY23. This is a different comparison group from the one the rest of this page uses — 6 districts here against 14 on DESE’s radar sheet — so the two rankings are not interchangeable and the count of districts travels with every one of them.

          Teacher

          036912HarvardAyer ShirleySchool DistrictNorth MiddlesexGroton-DunstableLunenburgAshburnham-Westminster

          FY23 · headcount, not FTE · 6 districts, which is not the same comparison group as the rest of this page.

          Paraprofessional

          02468Ayer ShirleySchool DistrictLunenburgHarvardAshburnham-WestminsterNorth MiddlesexGroton-Dunstable

          FY23 · headcount, not FTE · 6 districts, which is not the same comparison group as the rest of this page.

          Lunenburg's standing in FY23, by job classification

          Job classificationLunenburg per 100 pupilsRankHighestLowest
          Administrator1.223 of 6Harvard 1.37North Middlesex 0.76
          Other - Licensed0.906 of 6Groton-Dunstable 1.40Lunenburg 0.90
          Other - Non-Licensed2.431 of 6Lunenburg 2.43Groton-Dunstable 1.45
          Paraprofessional3.782 of 6Ayer Shirley School District 4.10Groton-Dunstable 2.76
          Teacher7.875 of 6Harvard 9.02Ashburnham-Westminster 7.15

          A correction this file caused, kept here because the shape repeats

          `All Educators` is this file’s own total printed as a row beside seven race rows that sum to it. Reading both doubles every figure — which this project did once, publishing 38 administrators and 118 paraprofessionals where the file says 19 and 59. The build now refuses to write unless the naive sum is exactly twice the published figure, so if the state changes the shape of this file the page stops rather than quietly doubling or halving. Any column that prints a group total beside its own parts is the same trap.

          What this does not show

          Who is part-time. A share is an average over a whole job class. One full-timer beside one half-timer, and two people at three quarters, give the same figure. Nothing published gives the distribution.

          Whether a post was filled all year. A headcount is a return for one point in the school year, exactly like the town’s printed rosters. A post held open for six months and filled for six is not distinguishable from either.

          Who pays. Not one of these 3 years carries a funding source. That remains the question this whole archive cannot answer.

          Counsellors, social workers, psychologists and nurses — and why they are the hardest group here to see

          None of these people is a teacher on the state’s teacher returns, so the state’s FTE series contains none of them — not the school panels above, and not the district series on did staffing go up. The state’s workforce file reaches them for 3 years only and folds them into two residual buckets. What is left is the town’s own printed rosters — names, by school, FY11–FY25 — which carry no FTE, no funding source and no date within the year.

          Counsellors9 → 7

          FY11–FY25 · 106 names in all

          Psychologists1 → 3

          FY11–FY25 · 37 names in all

          Social workers0 → 2

          FY11–FY25 · 22 names in all

          Nurses4 → 4

          FY11–FY25 · 60 names in all

          Speech3 → 5

          FY11–FY25 · 60 names in all

          OT / PT1 → 4

          FY11–FY25 · 31 names in all

          Librarians3 → 3

          FY11–FY25 · 23 names in all

          Names printed, FY11–FY25

          RoleNames in FY11Names in FY25LowestHighestYears that rose
          Counsellors975107 of 14
          Psychologists13155 of 14
          Social workers02064 of 14
          Nurses44286 of 14
          Speech35275 of 14
          OT / PT14142 of 14
          Librarians33043 of 14

          A count of names the town printed is a real quantity and it is not a staffing level. Two consecutive reports may be photographs taken at different points in the school year, and a change between them is a difference between two documents.

          The one thing the state’s file does say about this group is who stayed, and it is the lowest figure in it. The bucket these people sit in — Other - Licensed, 14 people in FY23 — retained 56.3% of the previous year’s staff, against 88.9% for teachers. That is not a statement about counsellors. The bucket is a residual: it holds counsellors, social workers and psychologists and it also holds everyone else licensed who is not a teacher or an administrator, and DESE publishes no split of it. What can be said is that the group containing them turned over faster than any other group in the file.

          “ESSER funds allowed the School Department to hire 13 new positions across the district. Social workers, guidance counselors, subject specialists, tutors, and technicians were all brought into the school”

          Finance Committee · minutes · 2023-04-20 · our copy · the town’s

          The single largest confound in any staffing series covering these years. DESE counts federally funded staff exactly like appropriated staff, so a grant arriving and a grant ending are both invisible in the FTE line.

          “kept 2 social worker positions while cutting 2 budget funded guidance”

          Finance Committee · minutes · 2024-02-21 · our copy · the town’s

          The other end of the same grant. Positions were kept, cut and moved onto a different grant in one year — three different things that look identical in a headcount and in an FTE count alike.

          “Information is broken out to social worker caseloads by bui lding”

          School Committee · minutes · 2023-12-06 · our copy · the town’s

          The district HOLDS a per-building social worker caseload, and told the School Committee so while deciding what to cut. It is not published, and it is the one document that would turn the roster’s printed names into a service level. (The space inside “building” is in the town’s own scanned text; the quote is what the archive holds, not our repair of it.)

          “something you should be looking at to address social workers being cut”

          School Committee · minutes · 2024-01-24 · our copy · the town’s

          Public comment naming MassHealth reimbursement and outside agencies as ways to pay for the same work. Rule 11 in a sentence: the post is the same post and the fund is different, and no published document says which fund pays which post here.

          A possible explanation — nothing here tests it

          The ESSER grant paid for social workers, guidance counsellors, subject specialists, tutors and technicians — thirteen positions by the Finance Committee’s own account — and then ended. A roster that gains names in those years and loses them afterwards would look exactly like a district hiring and then cutting. So would a district doing neither while a grant arrived and left. Nothing in the rosters distinguishes the two.

          What would settle it: The per-building social worker and adjustment counsellor caseload the district prepared for its own budget decisions — it told the School Committee it had one, in the quote above — with FTE and funding source beside each post. That is a records request rather than a download, and it is a row in what we cannot answer.

          What the town itself printed — and why it is not a census

          Every annual town report carries a faculty and staff roster for each school, by name. 3815 names in all, of which 3651 are in the comparable panel below. It is the only published thing in this archive that touches the standing question of whether budgeted positions were filled.

          It cannot be read as a staffing trend, because what got printed changed. Which schools appear varies — there are 3 different combinations across 15 years. Central office is printed in 8 of them and left out of the rest, so it is excluded here entirely: a total that gains a whole page of names in some years and not others is measuring the page, not the payroll.

          Names the town printedRange — one school’s roster printed twice
          FY11FY12FY13FY14FY15FY16FY17FY18FY19FY20FY21FY22FY23FY24FY25075150225300

          School buildings only. Central office and the regional vocational school are excluded — see below for why each.

          Every year, and what was printed in it

          YearNamesRostersPagesCentral office printedSchools
          FY1119446yesLunenburg High School, Passios Elementary School, Lunenburg Primary School, Turkey Hill Elementary School
          FY1217734yesLunenburg High School, Lunenburg Primary School, Turkey Hill Elementary School
          FY1317235noLunenburg High School, Lunenburg Primary School, Turkey Hill Elementary School
          FY1421034yesLunenburg High School, Lunenburg Primary School, Turkey Hill Elementary School
          FY1523036yesLunenburg High School, Lunenburg Primary School, Turkey Hill Elementary School
          FY1625245yesLunenburg High School, Lunenburg Middle School, Lunenburg Primary School, Turkey Hill Elementary School
          FY1727647yesLunenburg High School, Lunenburg Middle School, Lunenburg Primary School, Turkey Hill Elementary School
          FY1827746noLunenburg High School, Lunenburg Middle School, Lunenburg Primary School, Turkey Hill Elementary School
          FY1925147noLunenburg High School, Lunenburg Middle School, Lunenburg Primary School, Turkey Hill Elementary School
          FY2024944noLunenburg High School, Lunenburg Middle School, Lunenburg Primary School, Turkey Hill Elementary School
          FY2123345yesLunenburg High School, Lunenburg Middle School, Lunenburg Primary School, Turkey Hill Elementary School
          FY2227245yesLunenburg High School, Lunenburg Middle School, Lunenburg Primary School, Turkey Hill Elementary School
          FY2326547noLunenburg High School, Lunenburg Middle School, Lunenburg Primary School, Turkey Hill Elementary School
          FY24272–27948noLunenburg High School, Lunenburg Middle School, Lunenburg Primary School, Turkey Hill Elementary School
          FY2525048noLunenburg High School, Lunenburg Middle School, Lunenburg Primary School, Turkey Hill Elementary School

          What this does not show

          Full-time equivalence. A roster prints a name and a title. A 0.4 music teacher and a full-timer are one row each, and there is no way to tell them apart. This is the single reason a roster count cannot be compared to the state’s FTE, here or anywhere else on this site.

          Who pays. No roster names a funding source. That is the question that matters most for the budget and it is answered nowhere in these documents.

          When. The rosters are undated within the year. Two consecutive reports may be photographs taken at different points in the school year.

          Whether a post was vacant. A name is a person the report named. A post held open all year appears nowhere at all, and looks exactly like a post that was never budgeted.

          By role, on the panel that stays comparable

          The same names, sorted by what the printed title says the person does. The classification is ours — 266 of 3651 names (7.3%) carry a title no rule recognised, and those are counted as unrecognised rather than quietly filed under “other”.

          The eight roles with the most names across the whole run. Every panel is on the same vertical scale. The amber bar is FY24, where one school’s roster was printed twice and there is no way to split a role between the two.

          Teachers67 → 96

          FY11–FY25 · 1357 names in all

          Paraprofessionals42 → 52

          FY11–FY25 · 721 names in all

          Specialists11 → 11

          FY11–FY25 · 303 names in all

          Administrators10 → 16

          FY11–FY25 · 210 names in all

          Custodial4 → 11

          FY11–FY25 · 185 names in all

          Food service5 → 11

          FY11–FY25 · 173 names in all

          Counsellors9 → 7

          FY11–FY25 · 106 names in all

          Office staff5 → 3

          FY11–FY25 · 77 names in all

          Every role category, first printed year to last

          RoleNames in FY11Names in FY25Total across the run
          Teachers67961357
          Paraprofessionals4252721
          Specialists1111303
          Title not recognised2722266
          Administrators1016210
          Custodial411185
          Food service511173
          Counsellors97106
          Office staff5377
          Nurses4460
          Speech3560
          Psychologists1337
          OT / PT1431
          Librarians3323
          Social workers0222
          Technology2020

          What this does not show

          That a category rising means more of that job. Custodial and food service staff appear on some schools’ rosters and not others, in ways that change year to year. A category that doubles between two reports may be a category that started being printed.

          That a category vanishing means a post was cut. A title the report stopped printing and a post the district stopped filling are the same absence on the page. This is why the names are kept: a person appearing under a new title separates a renamed post from a departure, and nothing else here can.

          By school, in the most recent year with no double-printed roster

          FY25. Names only — no FTE, no funding source, and 12 people appear on more than one school’s roster that year, which is district-wide staff in the source rather than a duplication in the extract.

          Lunenburg Primary School73
          Lunenburg High School64
          Turkey Hill Elementary School64
          Lunenburg Middle School49

          What is wrong with this data, stated

          Every item below is found by a rule in the generator rather than written down, so the counts move when the extraction improves instead of going quietly stale.

          FY24: Turkey Hill Elementary School’s roster is printed twice

          Pages 107 and 108 of the FY24 annual town report each carry a complete roster for that school — 61 names on one and 70 on the other, 33 of them on both, with different principals. Nothing on either page says which year it describes. Summing them doubles a school; picking one discards a document. That year is drawn as a range, and the range is the honest answer rather than a caveat under a single bar.

          5 printed department headings came back from OCR unreadable

          These roster pages are scans and are read by OCR. 39 of the 586 names filed under a heading that names a grade sit under a heading whose grade level cannot be read. The rule is that a heading containing the word grade must have a recognisable ordinal beside it; these do not. Nothing else on this page depends on the grade level, so the effect is that those names have a school and a role and no grade — not that any count is wrong.

          As OCR read itNamesYearsSchools
          Ith Grade:16FY19, FY21, FY25Lunenburg Middle School
          econd Grade Teacher8FY23Lunenburg Primary School
          secona Grade5FY12Lunenburg Primary School
          8t Grade Teachers5FY15Lunenburg High School
          Gth Grade:5FY23Lunenburg Middle School

          Two things excluded, and why

          • Monty Tech (regional vocational) — 6 names, printed in 1 of 15 years (FY19). administrators of the regional vocational school Lunenburg sends students to — not Lunenburg staff.
          • Central office — 158 names, printed in 8 of 15 years (FY11, FY12, FY14, FY15, FY16, FY17, FY21, FY22). printed in some annual reports and not others, so including it moves the total in years when nothing changed.

          The town publishes gross wages. They cannot be used to count school employees.

          3545 rows across 13 years, one per named employee — and only 414 of them carry a department at all, so there is no way to tell a school employee from a highway employee for the rest. Every row is marked no check: the report prints no total, so nothing in the extraction can be reconciled against the document. It is a real dataset and it answers a different question.

          The same staff, counted two other ways

          Did staffing go up?

          The state’s FTE series over a window you move yourself — and the count of how many spans of published years give each answer.

          The paraprofessionals

          The biggest single change in who Lunenburg’s schools employ, and the budget lines underneath it.

          What the town said about this, and how much of the archive could be read

          Every quote on this page 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, which is why adjustment counselor and reduction in force are on the list despite returning nothing.

          177
          documents mention “staffing”
          21
          documents mention “class size”
          38
          documents mention “paraprofessional”
          9
          documents mention “world language”
          7
          documents mention “interventionist”
          2
          documents mention “ELL”
          34
          documents mention “ESSER”
          11
          documents mention “guidance counselor”
          16
          documents mention “social worker”
          3
          documents mention “caseload”
          0
          documents mention “adjustment counselor”
          0
          documents mention “reduction in force”
          3
          documents mention “school psychologist”

          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

          • What Lunenburg’s counsellors, social workers, psychologists and nurses do as a series. None of them is a teacher on these returns; the state’s workforce file reaches them for three years only and puts them in two residual buckets; the town’s rosters name them and carry no FTE. The district DOES hold a per-building social worker caseload — it said so to the School Committee on 6 December 2023 while deciding what to cut — and it is not published.
          • What share of a post any NON-TEACHING adult in a school holds. DESE publishes a full-time equivalent for teachers at school level and for nobody else — not for a paraprofessional, an administrator, a nurse, a counsellor, a custodian or a kitchen post, at any school, in any year. So the difference between a school panel’s roster count and its teaching FTE is not part-timers: it is everybody the FTE file does not reach.
          • Which school year a printed staff roster describes. The rosters carry no date, and the town’s own prose suggests the school section may run a year ahead of the cover — three sentences across fifteen reports name a fall and a student count, and matched against the state’s October enrolment two are closer to the year after the report’s fiscal year and one to the year on it. The panels pair each roster with the year it is labelled with, and that pairing is not established.
          • Which of two documents is short where a school printed fewer teaching names than the state counts teaching posts. It happens in 25 of the 54 school-years that have both, and it is concentrated in the two schools that share a building. Our reading of a scanned page, what the town chose to print, and an assignment the state counts at one co-located school whose holder the town printed under the other all fit the same numbers.
          • How much of a post any individual holds. The headcount and the FTE together give an average share for a whole job class and nothing else: one full-timer beside one half-timer and two people at three quarters are the same figure.

          What would close these

          DESE’s EPIMS work assignment detail by school and job classification, which would put an FTE and a funding source beside every adult in a building rather than beside the teaching posts alone; and a dated roster, which would say which school year each printed page describes. 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…

          our copy · the publisher’s

          dese-teachers-by-grade-subject.xlsx

          Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

          The same FTE split by grade band and across a much wider subject list — physical and health education, computer science, engineering and twenty more the core-academic file never prints. The subject series on this page is read from here and checked against the file above.

          table dese_teacher_grade_subject · 136.2 MB

          sha256 76a5498ba1b5d776…

          our copy · the publisher’s

          dese-teachers-by-program-area.xlsx

          Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

          Teacher FTE split into general education, special education, career and technical, and English learner. Published on this page as a registered gap rather than as a finding — see the section that draws it.

          table dese_teacher_program_area · 3.3 MB

          sha256 9fa88b8e1906ea09…

          our copy · the publisher’s

          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…

          our copy · the publisher’s

          dese-educators-retention.xlsx

          Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

          Educator headcount and retention by job classification, FY2021–FY2023. The only state file that reaches counsellors, administrators and paraprofessionals as a group — three years, headcount not FTE.

          table dese_educator_workforce · 1.6 MB

          sha256 be8a87c9471e2697…

          our copy · the publisher’s

          Where every figure on this page comes from

          The rosters

          3815 names read page by page out of 15 annual town reports. There is no total printed on a roster, so the check is line accounting — every non-blank line on a page claimed as an entry or a heading.

          PROVENANCE-staff-rosters.md carries the per-page ledger.

          The state’s FTE, headcount and enrollment

          17 years of FTE, FY09–FY25, LEA 01620000; 3 years of headcount, FY21–FY23. Every measure reconciles against DESE’s own printed totals (161 yes).

          sources/state-dese/radar-district-comparison.xlsx

          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.

          /data/who-works-in-each-school.json

          Every other report

          The One Big Report →Special education — four reports →How many students one special education group may have →What other districts spend, for each pupil →What the state requires us to spend — and where that puts us →Chapter 70 — the formula, and why it pays the floor →How Chapter 70 actually works, in eight steps →School staffing — did it go up, and over which years →The paraprofessionals →What courses actually ran, subject by subject →The cut register — what was announced, and what shows →What stopped being funded →When a grant ends — who picks up the bill →Who leaves Lunenburg schools, and where they go →Monty Tech — the assessment, and what sets it →If students leave — what school choice would cost →What a family actually pays →What sports cost, and who pays →Health insurance — the cost outside the school budget →Budgets against what was later reported →

          Every analysis this project has written, in one index, is at reports.

          What changed

          Version 14 — updated September 7, 2026