Posted on 11/21/2018 1:03:47 PM PST by yesthatjallen
The American education lobby is caught in a pickle.
On one hand, advocates and influencers are trying to convince people that public education is chronically underfunded, even going so far as to claim that schools are “starving.”
On the other hand, watchdogs have documented countless examples of waste and misuse of funds—everything from the McKinney school district’s $70 million high school football stadium to the La Joya school district’s $20 million water park to the Brownsville school district’s 65-foot, state-of-the-art digital scoreboard that is “the largest of its kind in Texas.”
Other examples exist too, but perhaps the most instructive involves superintendent pay packages. After all, leadership starts at the top.
It’s a problem nationwide, but we’ll focus on Texas for now.
In terms of straight salary, school superintendents are among the highest paid public servants in the state. Sitting atop that group is the head honcho of the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District (ISD). He took home a whopping $406,484 for the 2017-18 school year. That was followed closely by the heads of Grand Prairie ISD ($405,795), Conroe ISD ($393,984), and Katy ISD ($386,850).
In all, Texas has nearly 100 superintendents earning the equivalent of $250,000 or more and 800-plus who are paid $100,000 or more. About 350 earn more than the Texas governor.
It’s not just that superintendent salaries are supersized. They’re also growing fast.
From 2013-14 to 2017-18, superintendents in Grand Prairie, Conroe, and Katy ISD saw their salaries soar by about 30 percent. In each case, salaries increased far faster than student enrollment, which grew by 5.9 percent, 12 percent, and 15 percent respectively. In the case of Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, its top administrator’s salary climbed by 16.7 percent while student enrollment edged up only slightly, by 4.5 percent.
Of course, superintendent salaries are just part of the problem. Rich benefit packages are also an issue.
To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with providing benefits. But there’s a difference between offering competitive compensation and giving away the store. To illustrate this point, look at what Grand Prairie ISD offered its superintendent.
In addition to a $400,000-plus salary, the superintendent also receives a $1,000 monthly automobile allowance, a $1,000 monthly housing allowance, a $50,000 “retention supplement,” and is reimbursed for her contribution to the state pension plan.
But wait, there’s more.
In 2016, the district purchased a $700,000 house for the superintendent to live in. The property features a “long private driveway [that] leads to a four-bedroom home, with a barn and a pool.” It rents out this palatial estate to its superintendent for a paltry $2,000 per month, half of which is covered by the aforementioned housing allowance.
Also, the district pays for routine maintenance and, shockingly enough, it spent $160,000 in taxpayer money to renovate the property and install new tile, countertops, ceiling fans, and more.
How rampant overspending like this improves student outcomes is anyone’s guess, but it certainly puts to shame the idea that schools are “starving.” If anything, just the opposite is true.
And if any further evidence is needed, one need only look to superintendent severance packages.
Some Texas school districts are paying their top administrators a lot of money to leave. From 2013 to 2017, Texas ISDs forked out $18.3 million in severance payments to 141 superintendents, according to the Texas Monitor. And in some cases, those payments defy logic.
In May, Katy ISD’s board unanimously approved a massive $750,000 payout to its now ex-superintendent, equal to twice his annual salary. Last year, Garland ISD’s superintendent was given $448,115 in severance payments. Though by the time he cashed out his benefits, unused sick leave, and other perks, the payout had ballooned $686,225. In Johnson City ISD, a school district of fewer than 750 students, its superintendent’s annual salary totaled $149,547 and yet he received a $256,727 severance payment — even though the district was dealing with an almost $1 million budget deficit.
The fact is that public education isn’t underfunded. Boards and administrators have plenty of money — they’re just not spending it in the right place, i.e. in the classroom. That much is clear from the abuses above.
This is an important lesson that lawmakers should remember when the advocates and influencers come demanding billions more for public education, in Texas and elsewhere. Throwing gobs more money at this problem is not going to solve the root issue.
James Quintero leads the Think Local Liberty project at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. He can be reached at jquintero@texaspolicy.com.
There salaries are outrageous.
What makes it even worse is when they fail, and they all do, we find out their contract has a multi-million dollar buy-out claus with benefits.
The only ‘problem’ w/ “public” education is the Socialism.
Remove all general populace theft & make those utilizing the service pay, *DIRECTLY*, and you’ll see a SLUE of ‘problems’ disappear overnight.
What are they freaking running IBM!?!!
Being from NYC, I EXPECTED to see NYC area schools listed.
This is TX!!!
Someone round em up and get rid of em!!
Ten years ago there were none of the Superintendents of the 15 School District in my Pennsylvania County who were making LESS than the $134,000.00 salary of the Commissioner of the Pennsylvania State Police.
None of the Superintendents supervised 4000+ armed employees in 84 stations.
There’s a lot wrong with this picture!
Public education has too many positions in the board offices. Too many experts telling me how to teach, but they have less experience and less credentials.
Too much micromanagement too.
Heh.
Next they need to do a story on the salaries the school football coaches make.
That’ll frost your cookies, for sure!
Well, in most states the highest paid state worker is a football coach. Here in Kentucky it’s a basketball coach.
Here are the salaries of the head high school football coaches at every 5A and 6A school in Texas. Austin Lake Travis coach Hank Carter is the highest-paid coach in the state, with an annual salary of $155,156. Twenty-eight coaches earn $120,000 or more, including five whose earnings top $130,000.
Read more here: https://www.star-telegram.com/news/special-reports/databases/article168974117.html#storylink=cpy
Broward Superintendent Robert Runcie will get a $28,000 raise and additional benefits under a contract approved by the School Board on Tuesday. The deal brings Runcie’s salary to $335,000 and extends his employment through June 30, 2023.
Shameful -Runcie - responsible for the lax discipline that enabled Nicolas Cruz to commit mass murder at a Broward school- Marjory Stoneman Douglas.
Runcie school super. makes nearly more than the Florida Gov, SOS, & Lt. Gov. combined.
Florida SOS-........................................... $140,000
Governor of Florida Scott / DeSantis ..............$130,273
Lt. Governor of Florida Cantera ................... $124,851
bkmk
The same pool of people keep transferring to different districts with massive salaries and then the negotiated buy-outs with benefits.
I remember former UConn Men’s basketball coach getting pissed at a reporter for asking him what he thinks about being the highest paid employee of the state.
Bookmark
The education-industrial complex is an absolutely massive bubble - fed by massing spending and massive debt from both government and students
It needs to be popped
All of them are absurdly overpaid.
That angers me as much as seeing any bureaucrat getting paid obscene salaries at partly my expense.
They have so much money they are wasting it.
And the education is getting worse.
“In terms of straight salary, school superintendents are among the highest paid public servants in the state. Sitting atop that group is the head honcho of the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District (ISD). He took home a whopping $406,484 for the 2017-18 school year.”
This travesty exists because so-called conservatives refuse to get off their fat, useless butts and attend schoolboard meetings to challenge this crap. Fake conservatives seem to enjoy getting their faces stepped on and ground into the concrete because I see little to no resistance.
If so-called conservatives were serious about protecting their families and children against leftists schoolboards, there would be a minimum of 1,000 conservatives at schoolboard meetings, screaming and threatening to beat the snot out of them.
We are at war, and I truly believe that Mammon-worshipping “conservatives” don’t get it.
I am proud to say that I went to a one-room schoolhouse in NE Kansas.
Our Teacher, Mrs. Bell stoked the stove in winter, cleaned the room year-round, rang the bell in the belfry, produced and directed the CHRISTmas program and kept the impressive library in perfect order.
She didn’t do bathrooms, however...they were one-holers down at the edge of the school property and didn’t require much attention.
Our superintendent, Mr. Swoboda came round once every two years or so in his own car. I believe he had one clerk for the entire school district which was one county in size...
And I grew up to be a nuclear physicist.
Produced before WWII, it had everything you needed for a U.S. High School education: three European languages, Greek, Latin, Algebra, Geometry, Calculus, Trigonometry, European/U.S. History, Zoology, Botany, Chemistry, Civics—and perhaps other subjects I've forgotten. Maybe you were expected to be accomplished in English grammar before entering High School—IDK.
Oh yes...Physics... (Which started my rant!)
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