Topic Deep Dive: Where Your School Dollars Are Actually Going

A Five-Year Look at Budget Growth, Staffing, and Priorities (FY 2023 – FY 2027)

By Strategy and Accountability Chair Ryan Reyna (District A)

As a School Board member, one of my key roles is to hold the Division (and its leadership) accountable. At the same time, one of the things I value most about serving on this Board is that our community holds us accountable. Since my time joining the Board (and even before that as I served as Chair of the Board’s Budget Advisory Committee), I've often heard a concern from residents: that our central office has grown out of proportion, adding layers of administrators at the expense of teachers and staff who work directly with students — and that this expansion has contributed to a budget that keeps climbing at a time when the City's financial picture is getting tighter.

That concern deserves a real answer — not a talking-point dismissal, but an honest look at the numbers. So that's exactly what I want to do here. Using five years of budget data spanning FY 2023 through the proposed FY 2027 budget, I'll walk you through what's actually driving our spending and staffing changes. The findings may surprise you.

The Budget Has Grown — Here's What's Behind It

There is no getting around it: our total budget—inclusive of local, state, and federal funds—has grown from $311 million in FY 2023 to a proposed $374 million in FY 2027, an increase of approximately $63 million, or about 20%. Residents are right to want an explanation for that, and I want to give them one.

The Division’s single largest cost driver is teacher pay. Professional Instruction Regular Salaries — the base pay for our core teaching staff — have increased by approximately $27.6 million over five years, rising from $129.9 million to $157.5 million. This reflects our attempt to stay regionally competitive for teacher pay following the COVID pandemic. It also reflects pay increases provided by the state in the past five years. That’s because any time the state provides a raise to teachers, Alexandria is responsible for paying for 80% of the increase (i.e., if the state offers a $10M raise to Alexandria teachers, local tax or revenues or cuts to other areas of the Operating budget pay for $8M of the raise and the state pays the other $2M).

This year’s budget proposes an increase of $12 million in this line item to account for Alexandria’s potentially first-ever collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with our educators and support staff. To put that in perspective: the entire year-over-year jump in total budget request from the City is attributable to the CBA. These are potential contractual obligations to our educators — not discretionary choices or administrative bloat.

The second major driver is employee benefits, which have grown by $17 million — an increase of 23.5%. The largest piece of that is healthcare: Hospital and Medical Plan costs alone increased by $9.4 million, rising from $24.9 million to $34.3 million. FICA and Medicare contributions added another $4.8 million. These increases are driven by the broader healthcare market and federal payroll requirements — factors that are largely outside our control, and that virtually every public employer in the country is grappling with.

Taken together, salary and benefits increases account for the overwhelming majority of our budget growth. By contrast, non-personnel expenses — things like purchased services and supplies — actually decreased by approximately $1 million in FY 2027. The budget is not growing because we're spending more on programs or contracts. It's growing because people cost more to employ, and because we've made targeted investments in student support.

The Staffing Picture May Surprise You

If the concern is that we've been steadily adding administrators, the staffing data tells a fundamentally different story.

Over the full five-year period, total positions in the Operating budget (i.e., the portion covered by the City) across the Division have actually decreased — from 2,498 Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) positions in FY 2023 to 2,492.7 FTE in the proposed FY 2027 budget. That is a net reduction of roughly 6 positions across the entire school system, even as the budget has grown due to salary and benefit cost increases. We are not adding headcount. We are paying existing staff more while managing targeted adjustments to address student needs. 

And the Division is not shifting FTE away from schools to Central Office. In the past 5 years, there are an additional 3.2 Central Office FTE and 18 School FTE in the Operating budget. To balance that growth, leading to the overall decline of total headcount, the Division transitioned to contracting for custodial and security services.

So where has staffing actually grown? Almost entirely in student-facing roles — and the reasons why are worth understanding.

Student Services: Responding to the Post-COVID Reality

The single largest staffing increase in the Division has occurred in Student Services — the department that houses our school counselors, social workers, and related student support staff. Student Services has grown by 28.78 FTE over five years, from 163 to 191.78 positions, and expenditures have grown from $19.7 million to $26.2 million.

This is not a coincidence. The COVID-19 pandemic had a profound effect on the social, emotional, and behavioral health of students. We saw it in our schools before the research confirmed it, and the research has since confirmed it unambiguously. Students are presenting with higher rates of anxiety, depression, and social skill deficits than pre-pandemic cohorts. Counselors and social workers are not peripheral — they are increasingly essential to the academic environment. Students who are in crisis cannot learn, and teachers cannot teach effectively when a significant portion of a classroom is struggling emotionally. These positions are a direct investment in student outcomes.

Special Education: Meeting Our Obligation

Special Education has seen one of the larger staffing increases in the Division, growing by 20.5 FTE over five years from 396 to 416.5 positions. Total Special Education expenditures have grown from $36.2 million to $43.6 million. This is not optional spending. Federal and state law requires us to provide a free and appropriate public education to every student with a documented disability, and the number of students qualifying for these services has grown. Each new teacher, specialist, and instructional assistant in this area represents a real student — often a student with complex needs — who is getting the support the law requires and that basic fairness demands.

English Language Learners: Serving a Growing Population

Our English Language Learner population has grown, and our staffing has followed that growth. At the elementary level, EL teachers have increased from 90.5 to 97 FTE — a gain of 6.5 positions — reflecting higher enrollment among students who are learning English alongside grade-level content. It is worth noting that a significant number of additional EL-related positions across the Division are supported by dedicated grant funding, meaning external revenue sources — not local tax dollars — are paying for a portion of this growth. Serving EL students well is both the right thing to do and a legal requirement; underfunding this area would create academic gaps that cost far more to remediate later.

Technology: Classroom Support, Not Administrative Overhead

Technology is another area of growth — a net addition of 12 FTE over five years in the Technology category can sound like we're building out an IT bureaucracy. But a closer look at where those positions are located tells a different story. The largest single staffing increase within Technology came specifically in 'Tech – Classroom Instruction' — positions that directly support the integration of technology into day-to-day teaching and learning. This reflects the reality that modern instruction is technology-dependent, and that teachers need real human support to use these tools effectively with students. These are not helpdesk positions for administrators; they are supports for classrooms.

So What About Central Office?

Here is the direct answer to the original question.

The Administrative, Attendance, and Health category — which covers functions like Personnel Services, Planning, Psychological Services, Fiscal Services, and General Administration — has grown by approximately 10 FTE over five years, from roughly 158 to 168 positions. That is an increase of about 6% in administrative staffing over half a decade, while the student population and the complexity of state and federal compliance requirements have continued to grow alongside it. Nearly all of that growth is in two areas: human resources and attendance services. Investments in those area have led to having the lowest vacancy rate in the last decade at ACPS and declines in our chronic absenteeism rate (though more work is definitely needed in that area).

Meanwhile, our Instruction category — the largest single area of the budget — grew by $34 million and represents approximately $259 million of our $374 million proposed budget (for all combined funds). Nearly 1,955 of our 2,493 FTE are in instruction-related positions. Some administrative functions have actually seen reductions: Executive Administration, for example, went from 8 positions to 4 over this period.

The ratio of administrative staff to student-facing staff has not meaningfully shifted. The concern that central office growth is driving budget increases is not supported by the data.

Acknowledging the Real Challenges

I want to be clear about something: a $63 million budget increase over five years is not a trivial thing. It places real demands on the City and on taxpayers, and those demands come at a time when municipal finances are genuinely strained. State funding has increased 20% and City funding has grown 17.5% to support this budget — contributions we are grateful for and that we take seriously.

The board takes its fiscal responsibility seriously. We will continue to evaluate programs rigorously, look for efficiencies where they exist, and make sure that every dollar of public money is justified. I welcome the scrutiny, because public education is a public trust.

But I also want residents to know that when they look at where the money is going, they will find it going to teachers' salaries, healthcare costs for our workforce, special education services, mental health support for students, classrooms for English language learners, and technology that helps kids learn. The growth in this budget reflects the growth in what students need, the potential terms of negotiated labor agreements, and healthcare cost increases that no school district has been able to avoid.

That is not the story of a district that has lost sight of its mission. It is the story of a district trying to hold the line on what matters most while navigating real financial pressures. Our students and our community deserve that clarity — and they deserve a board that will keep making that case with data.

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Questions or feedback? Please email Ryan.Reyna@acps.k12.va.us

I welcome the conversation.

Data referenced in this post is drawn from the district's official budget documents covering FY 2023 Actuals through the FY 2027 Proposed Budget.