MIDDLETOWN — The School Department has faced a perfect storm of staff-shrinking factors in recent years: declining enrollments, cuts in local and federal aid, and the state’s constricting tax-levy cap.

Since 2000, the school system’s student population has dropped by 491 students — 56 of whom left after the 2005-06 school year. The exodus is due mostly to the military’s shrinking presence on Aquidneck Island, as well as Little Compton’s decision to send its high-school age students to the neighboring Portsmouth school district instead of Middletown schools.

Budget pressures and declining enrollments meant the elimination of 19 teaching positions last year, a trend that’s continued with the elimination of 15 positions this year and the proposal to cut 16 more in the fiscal 2009 budget. The staff cuts have included one nurse teaching position — forcing two nurses to divvy up their time at the town’s three elementary schools — and two guidance counselors, one each from Gaudet Middle School and Middletown High School.

Enrollment numbers now seem to be leveling off, but Schools Supt. Rosemarie K. Kraeger said she worries about any unanticipated spikes in student enrollment. Class sizes are mostly at, or near, the contractual maximums of 20 students in kindergarten, first and second-grade classrooms, and 25 students in the other grades.

But while Middletown’s teacher roster has shrunk in recent years, the schools’ payroll still accounts for 70 percent of the community’s total. That breakdown is more than that of most East Bay communities, although less than Barrington (78.4 percent) and Portsmouth (72.6 percent.) For comparative purposes, South Kingstown and North Kingstown spent 71 percent and 68 percent, respectively, on their public-school payrolls.

Kraeger said the school district simply employs more full-time workers than Middletown’s municipal government.

“We are a service organization,” she said in a recent interview. “Our town has been very fair [in budgeting]. They recognize that we deliver service to kids, and they’ve been very, very fair to us.”

Kraeger says Middletown’s school costs befit the town’s name.

“We’re right in the middle,” she said of The Journal’s analysis of local payroll data. “Some of it is by design. Our teacher compensation is the mean of surrounding communities. Our test scores are similar to populations like ours.”

Middletown’s top-paid school personnel are by and large administrators, but Kraeger said the district allocates less money toward upper management than other school systems.

“I don’t feel we’re top-heavy at all,” Kraeger said. “Our dollars really go to instruction and instructional support.”

In fact, Middletown’s per-pupil expenditure of $12,613 is more than many other East Bay communities. Kraeger attributes that to the fact that Middletown has more student programs, such as all-day kindergarten, literacy teachers and an alternative-learning program for “nontraditional” high school students, than surrounding towns.

Middletown’s full-time equivalent school staff is paid an average of $53,136. The district’s teachers are experienced, with more than half of them paid at the tenth salary step, according to school officials. Seventeen percent of the teachers in 2006 were not only at the highest salary step but also in the highest-paid “class” — class V, which means they’ve earned a doctorate or have a certificate of advanced graduate-level study.

Salaries and benefits represent nearly 80 percent of the School Department’s budget, and step increases, longevity bonuses and education incentives are all mandated by the teachers’ contract, the latest version of which expires in June 2009.

“We definitely have a more seasoned staff,” Kraeger said, although the district has had to cut back on professional development in recent years because of budget cuts. Kraeger said she expects that a great number of teachers will be retiring in the next school year — a cost savings, for sure, but also a loss of their expertise.

On the municipal side, the bulk of the town’s payroll — 19 percent — goes to the town’s police officers and firefighters.

There are 150 full-time municipal workers, but Middletown also employs 314 part-timers making in 2006 from as little as $120 — paid to Portsmouth police Lt. Anthony Cambrola, who worked a detail shift to assist the Middletown police — to as much as $25,470 — paid to Edward Tracy III, a retired Middletown police captain paid hourly to work traffic details as a special officer. Also included in the “part-time” category are the members of the Town Council, who are paid stipends of $2,500.

The town’s employment rolls swell in the summer: Middletown employs 323 “seasonal workers” such as poll workers, lifeguards, beach staff and recreation workers, all but two of which made less than $11,000 for the year. The highest-paid seasonal workers, Harbormaster Stephen Ponte, also principal of Forest Avenue Elementary School, and beach manager Morrie Seiple, made $13,170 and $21,500, respectively, in 2006.

Interim Town Administrator Shawn J. Brown noted that the town’s salaries are “funded not only through local property taxes, but also from appropriations from the state, user fees, licenses, permits and grants.”

Brown said the average pay per FTE — $58,492 — is “consistent with other [Aquidneck] Island communities.”

Brown takes issue with The Journal’s population figure for Middletown, of 16,431. He said that figure excludes military personnel who are stationed in Middletown for a period of two years of less. Those people, he said, are counted as residents in their hometowns.

“Therefore,” he said in an e-mail to The Journal, “the population number cited in the ProJo’s analysis is inaccurate and understates the population serviced by employees of the town of Middletown… Further clouding the situation are service members living off-base and still not qualifying to be counted as residing in Middletown from the perspective of the census.”

For example, he said, the town’s police and firefighters provide services to the 450 units — housing about 3,000 to 4,000 people — at Naval Station Newport. Those houses represent about 7 percent of the town’s total dwellings.

The Journal culled Middletown’s population figure from an update to the 2000 U.S. Census, which determines residence based on where a person “usually” lives. The Census, for example, noted that of the 10,521 people, ages 18 to 64, living in Middletown at the time, 888 were part of the military.THE PUBLIC PAYROLL: EAST BAY

Payroll costs are by far the biggest item in the budgets of cities and towns. In the East Bay region, pay for municipal employees totaled more than $94 million, according to reports supplied to The Journal for each community for the calendar year 2006. The money for salaries came from local taxes, along with fees, grants and other sources.

In every community except for Newport, more money is spent on schools than on nonschool functions such as police and fire protection and public works.

The median household income offers a possible measure of the citizens’ ability to pay their municipal workers.

POPULATION is from 2006 U.S. Census estimates. MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOME is from 2000 Census, adjusted for 17 percent inflation from 2000 to 2006. SCHOOL and NON-SCHOOL PAYROLLS were compiled by the Journal from 2006 figures. SCHOOL FTEs are from the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for 2005-06 school year and are a total of teachers and staff. NON-SCHOOL FTEs are from the state Office of Municipal Affairs for 2007 fiscal year. (FTEs are calculated with a full-time employee counting as one and a part-time worker counting as a fraction of one, depending on how many hours he or she works.)

THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL

mwims@projo.com