How Can I Prevent Admin User Role Loss?

I went ahead posted a better question describing my problem, but as I wrote it I actually found the cause of the problem and solution.

cause of problem:
only the wp_users table was being excluded from my db exports on Test. so the Test server’s wp_usermeta table was being sent to Staging and created the odd behaviors found above.

Solution:
correctly exclude both wp_users and wp_usermeta tables

problem solved.

Notice how the user id changed after a migration in the above screenshots? wp_usermeta was the cause

I honestly don’t how this version of my script lost the wp_usermeta exclusion.. all others have it…. strange.