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Methodology & Approach

Buffalo Public Schools 2024-25 → 2025-26 budget dataset.

In one paragraph

Buffalo Public Schools publishes its annual Approved Budget as a long PDF. Almost every page that contains the school-by-school numbers is a rendered image of a table, not a machine-readable table. To produce a usable comparison between the 2024-25 and 2025-26 budgets, each per-school row was processed manually: values were entered field by field against the source PDF, cross-checked against an OCR pass to catch typos, then normalized into a common schema and recomputed into per-pupil and percent-change metrics. The resulting dataset covers 60 schools and powers every chart and table on this page.

Source documents

Two annual budget books published by Buffalo Public Schools:

  • FY 2024-25 Approved Budget: baseline year.
  • FY 2025-26 Approved Budget: comparison year.

Both documents are public records released by the District. Each budget book includes a per-school appendix listing approved allocations broken out by program (general education, special education, Title I, multilingual, community-school aid), an FTE roster (teachers, aides, coaches, guidance staff), and headcount statistics (enrollment, students with disabilities, English language learners, free-and-reduced-priced lunch eligibility). The status designation for each school (CSI, LSI, TSI, ATSI) follows the New York State Education Department's most recent accountability list.

Schema

For each school, the following fields are collected for both the 2024-25 and 2025-26 fiscal years:

  • school_id, school_name, grade (configuration label), status (CSI/LSI/TSI/ATSI/none)
  • enroll_2425, enroll_2526: total enrollment.
  • swd_2425, swd_2526: students with disabilities, expressed as a percent (0–100) of total enrollment.
  • ell_2425, ell_2526: English language learners, percent (0–100) of total enrollment.
  • frpl_2425, frpl_2526: free-and-reduced-priced lunch eligibility rate, percent (nominally 0–100). Two schools (Pathways Academy and Bennett Park Montessori) print FRPL rates outside the valid range in the source budget book itself, producing values like “FRPL 172%” and “FRPL 387%”. The values are preserved as-is in the dataset and CSV so the file matches the official document; rate-axis charts on this site filter to the valid 0–100 range, so dollar and FTE aggregates are unaffected. See the Issues tab for details.
  • budget_2425, budget_2526: total approved school-level budget.
  • gen_ed_*, sped_*, title1_*, multilingual_*, comm_*: program-level allocations.
  • fte_*, aides_*, coaches_*, guidance_*: staffing FTE.

Every *_delta and *_delta_pct field is computed downstream from the two-year fields. They are not pulled from the source documents; they are derived.

What is and is not in scope

In scope:

  • The 60 schools listed in both budget books' per-school appendices.
  • Approved/allocated school-level dollars for the categories listed above.
  • Staffing FTE as listed in the budget book staffing tables.
  • NYSED accountability designations as of the relevant school year.

Not in scope:

  • Actual spend. These are approved/allocated figures, not realized expenditures.
  • District central administration, transportation, facilities, and other non-school cost centers.
  • Charter schools chartered within the District footprint.
  • Capital budget. This dataset covers the operating budget only.
  • Federal grants outside the budget book (e.g., discretionary or competitive grants awarded mid-year).
  • Per-staff compensation. FTE counts are tracked; salary detail is not.

Limitations & known issues

  • Manual entry has a residual error rate. Values were entered against the source PDF and cross-checked with OCR, but typos, mis-read digits, and transposed columns remain possible on a dataset of ~3,000 numeric cells.
  • FRPL methodology shifts. The way the District reports free-and-reduced-priced lunch rates can shift between years (community eligibility provisions, direct certification changes). Year-over-year FRPL deltas should be read as directional, not as precise comparisons.
  • Budget categorization is the District's, not ours. If a program is reclassified between “general education” and “special education” in the new budget book, that creates an artificial year-over-year movement in those program-level fields. Total budget is more stable than program-level subtotals.
  • Aides and coaches are sparsely reported. Some schools list null values rather than zero. Null is preserved in the dataset; aggregate stats exclude nulls.
  • School identifier stability. School IDs are stable across the two years, but a small number of programs were renamed or restructured. Where ambiguity existed, the school was tracked by ID rather than name.
  • Snapshot, not a time series. This dataset covers two consecutive years. It is not yet long enough to support trend analysis.

Definitions

FTE.
Full-time equivalent. A 0.5 FTE guidance counselor is a half-time position.
FRPL.
Free and reduced-price lunch. Used as a proxy for student economic need.
SWD.
Students with disabilities.
ELL.
English language learners.
CSI.
Comprehensive Support and Improvement school. NYSED's designation for the lowest-performing 5% of Title I schools.
TSI.
Targeted Support and Improvement. Triggered when at least one student subgroup performs at CSI levels.
ATSI.
Additional Targeted Support and Improvement. A TSI school whose flagged subgroup has not improved over multiple years; one step from CSI.
LSI.
Local Support and Improvement. A New York-specific (not federally required) tier for schools NYSED tracks for local monitoring without invoking the federal CSI/TSI/ATSI apparatus.
Per-pupil.
School's approved budget divided by total enrollment for the same year.

Benchmarks & external sources

Several findings on this site cite an external standard or rule alongside the BPS-derived number, so a reader can judge whether the dataset value is better, worse, or in line with what national or state frameworks call for. Each benchmark on a finding card links to its primary source; the canonical list is below for easy citation.

  • Student-to-counselor ratio. American School Counselor Association recommends a maximum of 250:1. schoolcounselor.org ↗
  • Foundation Aid and pupil need weighting. New York State Education Department, Foundation Aid formula. nysed.gov ↗
  • CSI / TSI / ATSI accountability designations. ESSA Section 1111 (federal) and NYSED's ESSA implementation (state). ed.gov (OESE) ↗ · nysed.gov ↗
  • Title I, Part A: supplement, not supplant (ESEA §1118). Federal Title I funds must add to, not replace, state and local funding for high-poverty schools. ed.gov ↗
  • IDEA personnel qualifications. 34 CFR §300.156 requires special-education services from qualified personnel; paraprofessionals supplement, not substitute for, certified special-education teachers. sites.ed.gov ↗

Where a finding card shows a BPS-side comparison value (for example, the district counselor ratio), that value is computed at runtime from the dataset on this page rather than pulled from an external source. External sources are cited only for the standard or rule itself.

Sources & citation

The dataset and source code are released under CC0 1.0 Universal. Reuse freely; attribution is appreciated but not required.

Schools in scope
60
Fiscal years
FY 2024-25 → FY 2025-26
License
CC0 1.0
Author
David Liao
Prepared
May 2026
Source documents
Buffalo Public Schools FY 2024-25 and FY 2025-26 Approved Budget books, public records released by the District. The BPS website re-organizes URLs from year to year; the canonical access point for archived copies is the BPS Office of Finance.