Do You Actually Know Your Staffing Ratios—and Why They are “Right”?

By Dr. Harry Bloom. Founder and President, Benchmarking for Good, Inc.

Most school leaders think they know their staffing ratios. Most are wrong.

Not because they can't do the math — but because the number they carry in their heads is a school-wide average that flattens division-by-division realities, obscures staffing mix anomalies and role-by-role dynamics, and almost never gets compared against peers in any rigorous way.

Recent Benchmarking for Good data from 22 Jewish day schools makes the case impossible to ignore.

The Variation Is Not Random — It's Often a Call to Action

Middle School all-staff ratios among Jewish Day Schools schools of similar enrollment ranged from 3.0:1 to 10.7:1 in our study. Elementary ratios swung from 4.2:1 to 10.4:1. Early Childhood from 2.0:1 to 7.0:1. These are not different types of schools operating under different constraints. These are comparable institutions that have landed in radically different places — usually without a deliberate decision to get there.

Extreme variation at this scale is almost always a symptom of one or more of three things:

•      Structural mismatch: Overstaffing or understaffing

•      Improper job design: Roles that have drifted from their original purpose, or TAs substituting for teachers in ways no one formally sanctioned

•      Performance issues in disguise: Staff who are underperforming, with the organization quietly adding headcount to compensate rather than addressing the root cause

Any one of these is expensive. All three are avoidable — but only if you look.

The Question Isn't Whether Your Ratio Is High or Low

It's whether your ratio is intentional.

A lean ratio can be a smart, deliberate instructional model — or it can be the result of chronic underfunding that your faculty climate survey is quietly screaming about. A generous ratio can reflect a commitment to intensive student support — or accumulated organizational inertia that no one has had the courage to examine.

The schools that are managing this well share one characteristic: they can explain, at the division level and by role, exactly why their ratio is what it is, how it compares to peer institutions, and what they would change if resources allowed. Most schools cannot do this today.

How Benchmarking for Good Can Help

We assess your student-to-staff ratios — by division, by role, and by enrollment tier — and show you precisely how you compare to peer schools in the Jewish day school network. You'll see not just where you land, but what the variation means and where the highest-priority questions are.

•      Division-level ratio analysis across EC, Elementary, Middle School, and Upper School

•      Role-by-role breakdown: teachers, TAs, specialists, and resource room staff

•      Peer comparison against schools matched by enrollment size and grade configuration

•      Identification of outlier ratios that warrant deeper examination

•      Framing for leadership and board conversations about what the data means

Ready to find out where you actually stand--and what to do about it?

Contact harrybloom@benchmarkingforgood.org to learn how Benchmarking for Good can assess your school's staffing ratios and peer positioning.

About Benchmarking for Good

Benchmarking for Good conducts survey-based benchmarking research for Jewish day schools, helping school leaders make data-informed decisions about compensation, staffing, and institutional strategy. The data cited in this article is drawn from our Faculty Compensation and Staffing Survey across 22 North American Jewish day schools.