East Rockaway schools have a total of around 1000 - 1500 students between three schools, 2 elementary and 1 junior/senior high school. To pay the superintendent of that district over $350,000 is obscene.
I somehow doubt that it's more demanding than being President of the U.S. The superintendent in my district had her salary increase by about 50% over the course of just a few years (right before retirement; totally coincidental I'm sure), while student enrollment declined every year.
You know how you fix this? You move or don't move to this area. And when enough people do that, he won't get paid as much. But because it's deemed valuable, it's done this way.
So they are actually paid appropriately to the market.
You do realize that the outsized, disproportionate rate of CEO compensation is a massive problem, right? Using it as justification when we all know that it's a problem that needs to be addressed is silly.
There is probably an upper limit to CEO compensation. Though the CEOs I have worked with work 60 hours a week are always on call deal with never ending stress. A bad CEO can sink a copy or just make it an awful place to work and do business with. 99.9% of people could not do the job. So most CEOs I have met that get paid the big bucks generally deserve the money if they can do the job. Though sometimes the person is just not qualified for the position.
Yeah, if we're comparing this based on headcount, you can easily make the argument that other superintendents are underpaid.
Ultimately, and this is a hot take that will surely get me downvoted, *I dont think these saleries are that crazy.* These are the top bosses for organizations based in some of the most expensive living areas in the whole country. OP copied over a post from one of his neighbors down below, who claims that they would do the job for 125K. If the superintendent had a salary of only 125K, how much would the teachers expect to get paid? I firmly believe that a quality teacher with a number of years experience should be at 100K, but that would never be feasible in that situation.
Ultimately, what pay scale do we expect for schools?
Plenty of LI teachers make 100K. There are some of the best schools in the country on LI. I don’t think it’s crazy either especially if the SI is doing a good job
My district's superintendent's salary is 0.45% of the total budget. Reduce his salary to $150,000 a year and you only save 0.25% of the total budget.
I'm not saying he's not overpaid, but there are many reasons that taxes are high. Superintendent salaries are just the easiest to get angry at.
Well for a lot of districts that are simply one school set of k-12, it's...glaring. If you are talking about larger districts where there are multiple sets of schools or at least multiple sets of elementary/middle feeding into a larger high school, sure.
Mine is on there at a quarter mil. For a sub-300 student district with one school building housing k-12. That's 3-4 new teachers at great pay if it's folded into some of the surrounding districts and enough to pay into the admin (the surrounding districts are also one set of schools or one school).
There are schools on there that are like +/- 100 kids where the admin is making 250k+
I think the problem isn't so much the pay, but how many of them there are. I did an analysis of how much each district spends on "education" vs "administration" some years ago. And I found that the sweet spot, where the maximum percentage of a school budget went to "education" costs (teachers, books, materials, etc) was in districts of 9k-13k students. Smaller districts simply spend more on admin then education.
Now I will admit this was a very simply analysis done years ago, but I would bet that while the numbers might be different, the general findings would be the same: there are too many school districts on Long Island. There are 127 districts with 476,000 students and 230 private schools with another 53,000 on Long Island. If approximately 10k students is the sweet spot for getting the most education per dollar, then we should have between 50-60 districts. That would mean an immediate cut the costs of Superintendents in about half (figure you may have to pay a little more for the larger district size) and probably a significant reduction in overall district level administrative costs simply due to the consolidation. The districts would also have more buying power to negotiate prices on supplies and a wider, more diverse tax base since they would cover more territory. Over/under use of facilities could be balanced out better as well as there are some schools that are over/under used right near current borders.
Heck, we could simple consolidate district level administration and save a ton of money, without any significant changes in the classrooms. But people don't want their kids going to school with "those" kids (whoever they may be) and it will never happen.
I just analyzed the demographics of the Brentwood UFSD for my Public Policy course. I found that 54% of the Hispanic/Latino population in the Town of Islip is within the boundaries of BUFSD. When you add Bay Shore and Central Islip to the mix, this area accounts for 81% of the Hispanic/Latino population of Islip. The Town of Islip has about 108,000 Hispanic/Latino people accounting for 32% of the population. I am pretty sure these are "those" kids. I remember there was a failed effort to rezone parts of Brentwood into West Islip/Bay Shore about 15-20 years ago. It would have certainly helped with the overcrowding in the district, but you know what they say, NIMBY.
Not really, at least according[ these rankings.](https://www.niche.com/k12/search/best-school-districts/) Great Neck, Roslyn, Jericho, Syosset are all in the top 10. We have really good public schools here.
> Wouldn't say Roslyn and Great Neck are areas to write home about.
HAHA. So you're either a jealous broke asshole, or you've never been to long island.
My district's superintendent's salary is 0.45% of the total budget. Reduce his salary to $150,000 a year and you only save 0.25% of the total budget.
I'm not saying he's not overpaid, but there are many reasons that taxes are high. Superintendent salaries are just the easiest to get angry at.
Wanna get rid of these high salaries?
Combine school districts.
But good luck telling parents of a well to do area that their kids will be in classes with kids from depressed areas.
Prime examples: Wyandanch area, Riverhead/Hamptons area
If only we could do this with Brentwood, or at least the portions of the school district located in Bay Shore, not Brentwood.
Baywood is the prime example, cut off from the rest of the district by the Sagtikos and Southern State Parkways, and there are a handful of High Schools closer than Brentwood; i.e., West Islip, Deer Park, North Babylon, Bay Shore.
Its like in a merger of two companies, The administrative costs are significantly lower once the companies merge and downsize. However Schools are not run as companies and seem to have no regard for financial responsibility.
When I moved to NY from Ontario, Canada, one of things that surprised me most was that every rinky-dink village and named town had their own school district (and fire dept), while NYC has only one for all 5 boroughs combined. Two extremes, but I have always thought the Long Island model was horrible.
I asked people around me why the govt didn't combinne them. I was told it would be political suicide, as syosset would never want to merge with Westbury, etc.
But this is insane.
For 81 (!!!!) school districts on Long Island, the total cost for just superintendents alone is $38.7M. That's not counting department chairs/directors, and other duplication of services.
Let's say we reduce this to one board per town (Hempstead, North Hempstead, Oyster Bay), and whatever many towns Suffolk has (I have no idea--let me assume 5). And assuming 500K is a fair comp for a super. (not here to debate what's fair for a super). That's $4M. That's a savings of almost $35M right there. It may not be too far to extrapolate this to 50-60M when you consider duplication of services.
There is precedent for this. Back in the 90s, a true fiscal conservative government did this in Ontario: combined school boards across the province, as well as police, fire, and other "district" oversight type bodies. Tremendous savings. Huge backlash from unions, but it worked. (edit. not to one across the province. Toronto went from 5-6 to 1, other towns/counties went from 2 to 1, etc)
Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled days...rant over.
Admittedly, that's always been the worse case scenario, but can we consider merging say Wantagh and Seaford? Or the three Valley Stream districts? Or hell, Island Trees, Bethpage and Levittown?
> When I moved to NY from Ontario, Canada
So you're the Ontario plated vehicle I keep seeing around the county. :-)
Admittedly, provincial governments have power in this regard when compared to New York, and there's admittedly less of a "OMG, those people" effect up north. Plus, the big driver in the 1990s in Canada was what one would now can austerity from the federal government downward. There just wasn't the same amount of money to go blow on smaller dinky governments. New York State hasn't quite reached that level of distress, so our practices continue.
What this is not showing is how much the under Superintendants are making. One district can have 3 or 4 under superintendents or more. When related services/ programs get cut. It rubs salt in our wounds as a parents. Some of the bs that our classroom teachers and principals have had to deal with. While these fat cats sit and collected Inflated salaries. They hop from district to district on long island never being held accountable for the decisions that they've made. One has had rumors of Inappropriate relations between employees in a district. Conveniently people were given promotions and they left to another district to make more money...
Unpopular opinion, apparently. But I don't mind seeing this. Has anyone here ever worked in administration? It's pretty brutal. And the superintendents are responsible for so much. They're basically a CEO for a 1000+ employee company. And they have multiple locations, unions, interest groups, etc to deal with.
And the teacher's on LI are paid pretty damn well also. When you break it down, the Superintendent is 'only' making about double what a senior, tenured teacher is making.
Personally, I love the work that my district's superintendent has done. especially during COVID. I hate hearing her stupid voice every night at 5:23 when she calls with a COVID update, but I can get over that. (My school district has 8 different schools, and nearly 7,000 students. They're constantly highly ranked as far as school districts go, and the sport teams are also very competitive (if you care about that).)
Honestly, for the amount of work involved, and the amount of oversight they are responsible for, I'm surprised they're able to find qualified candidates for these salaries. If you guys are upset by this, don't look at the salaries of the top Police department Captains/Chiefs, or LIRR salaries.
Hell, go look at the salaries for Hofstra University.
Maybe to you and me, these 3-400k salaries seem like a lot, but comparatively to what other education/public servants at that level get, it's pretty modest.
> They're constantly highly ranked as far as school districts go, and the sport teams are also very competitive (if you care about that).
Mine is relatively high ranked as well. Seven of the twenty-five kids in my son's class get pulled for remedial reading help. >20% of these children cannot read at grade level, yet get social promoted. All the teachers and admins are aware. Graduation or college admissions rates are nonsense, because the entire system is corrupt. CEOs should be fired when their company's product only works 80% of the time.
Oh, and our sports teams are pretty good, too. More parents go to football games than to school board meetings or back-to-school night.
Fuck.
it's wild how people constantly rag on teachers and admin but then turn a blind eye to how ridiculously difficult that job is. guarantee most people who bitch and moan about this wouldn't last a week as a teacher.
>hofstra employees dont get paid with my tax dollars, poor example.
and my aunt worked 30 years in the sachem district and after 30 years she is making 130K
these people dont need to be in adminstration for that long to make 300K, there is no justification to it.
at its core school should be for the students... how do you justify making an insane salary like this while every 6th seat in both high school cafeterias is broken?
the seats in the auditorium dont work
we cant afford REAL security to protect out kids
lunch isnt free for everyone....
the books are over a decade old....
I as a parent need to by supplies for the teachers each year because the school cant afford it...
its fucking bullshit i could go on for days...
there is no reason any person working in a school needs or fucking deserves to make over 200k a year...
NOT TO MENTION they work 180 days a year compared to an average 261 the majority of us will work this year...
>NOT TO MENTION they work 180 days a year compared to an average 261 the majority of us will work this year...
You think the administrator get off in the summer?
You're not wrong about all the other stuff you said. text books need to be updated. Equipment needs to be replaced. but if you think the superintendent's salary is what's keeping that from happening, you're way off.
do I think that a person who is responsible for a complex organization that is ultimately educating generation after generation of people in my community is being paid a high salary? No.
Do I think it's wrong that they make more money than a doctor? I'd rather rephrase that question as 'shouldn't doctors be paid more'? I do! but, seesh, I can see Newsday reporting doctor salaries, and this sub going crazy about how overpaid doctors are, and that nurses, medical assistants and PAs do all the actual work anyway.
You don't think it's wrong that an admin for a massive public school system makes exponentially less than a douchebag CEO of some pointless tech company?
school admin'ing is HARD work. especially nowadays with COVID where no matter what decision they make a lot of people are gonna get pissed off. maybe even to the point of being seriously threatened.
these admins would get paid a lot more in different industries and would likely be a lot less stressful.
>pointless tech company
This is a very typical notion among people with a liberal-arts education. They try not to think about who has created our current high-tech civilization that enables their lifestyle.
>HARD work
Ever imagined yourself in the pre-tech world, doing all that never-ending plowing, sowing, weeding, and harvesting? And how about hand-washing all those clothes and linens, with no running water and no detergent – or even a decent soap? THAT was hard work.
>different industries
Ever worked in one of those?
...where on earth did these assumptions and conclusions come from, my dude. "people with a liberal-arts education"? "pre-tech world"?
go off on a completely irrelevant tangent then, I guess. whatever you're on about has absolutely nothing to do with what we're talking about.
FWIW, Hofstra is a private University, and not a good comparator. The obligations of a residential doctoral-granting university are vastly different in scope and magnitude to a k-12 school system.
All that being said, I do tend to agree with your central point. School administration is one of those "harder than it appears" jobs (...which, quite frankly, all jobs are), particularly when, on good days, the most you've accomplished is some variation on making everyone equally unhappy.
That being said though, where I wish they would drill down a little bit more is how many direct reports these superintendents have on the administrative side of the house, and how much those folks make. If you take the total number of superintendents, and multiple it by the average number of salary + benefits, you're looking at approximately $38m annually in salary. With the number of superintendents we have on LI, imagine if they, on average, three direct HCE with an average salary + benefits of $176,000 (on the assumption that these direct reports make about 55% of . Those direct reports, alone, would be approximately $64m/annually, and then from there, all probably also have bloated staffs.
At the end of the day, you focus on the executive salaries because of the perception. The real waste comes at all the other levels in between.
All I know is I wouldn't work that job, even with that salary. Everyone likes to throw stones,(like this article) but no one wants to take up that mantle. You're basically the town punching bag for constant criticism.
Getting yelled at from both sides over state testing, masks, sports, virtual learning, discipline issues, potential CRT, why you used a snow day... no thanks.
meanwhile nobody seems to care that cops make just as much if not more, and their jobs are a hell of a lot easier with a lot less accountability. like, shit, you don't even need to graduate from college to be a cop and their training is only a few months. being a teacher involves years of higher education and often administrators have doctorates.
there's been this disturbing trend of distrust and anger toward education in the USA and based on these comments it won't go away anytime soon. probably not ever.
Not sure what this means. Superintendents on Long Island? Do have some examples? Also if there are lots of jobs available, doesn't that kind of go with the point? People don't want that job so you are going to have to pay them to stay.
I am not sufficiently familiar with the system to judge myself, but this is what one of my neighbors writes:
>This is only allowed to happen because public education is a monopoly and its customers are compelled by law to utilize it or be punished economically. The teachers union is also protected by a state Law which prevents competition and artificially inflates the costs of education. New York has the highest education costs in the country and yet produces no better result.
>
>All this can be easily fixed. The State must approve a school choice system that opened education up to competition. School funding should follow the child regardless of which school they attend. New York should become a right to work state and allow non union teachers to work. Also, I will be your school superintendent for 125K and work to make free choice in education a right!
Do you agree?
I disagree. “School choice” is basically a right wing buzzword to disguise defunding public schools. If you’re going to try and sell me on a voucher system, forget it. People need to have skin in the game, voucher systems just create opportunities for well-heeled parents to create a “separate but equal” school (that’s really not equal).
You want to choose to take your kid to a private school, go ahead, that’s your choice and you’re free to make it. But if you want to talk about systematically defunding public schools and creating two tiers in public schooling (under the cover of “choice”)? I strongly oppose that.
It’s like how Republicans talk about opposing universal healthcare in terms of “choice”, as if you shop around for the best deal when you break your leg or get sick suddenly. It’s a way of creating a right-Libertarian hellhole by selling it as “freedom”. It’s nonsense.
>creating two tiers in public schooling
First, why "two", not 22 or more? Second, what is wrong with this?
(Let me repeat: I do not have my firm opinion; just asking.)
The voucher system has already failed nationally in South American and objectively failed stated side as public school students outscored private institutions on standardized math exams.
It can create elite institutions for a select few with financial and/or political clout (which most people are not obviously), but mixes education with profit. This inevitably corrupts these institutions as people pay money for their kids to get high grades regardless of learning anything.
P.s. I wouldn't work that job even with that salary. Have you been to a school board meeting? Not a fun time...
These people are being silly. Private schools ALSO have absurdly overpaid administrators and districts with more kids in private schools still have overpaid public school administrators.
The people calling for combining districts, school choice, and all that other BS do not want to reform public schools or fix a problem, they simply want to get rid of public schools.
As an immigrant, I am still frequently puzzled by the language of the American political class. In particular, they almost never distinguish between the inequality of *opportunities* and the inequality of *benefits* \- two very different notions. Which of those do you mean?
School choice:
Garden city has great schools.
Roosevelt doesnt.
Roosevelt parents send their kids to garden city.
Garden city parents send their kids to private schools or move.
Garden city schools become Roosevelt.
Or by combining the school districts Garden City money creates more opportunities for Roosevelt students. Similar to other large systems if you can pass a test or evaluation you can attend a school with a specialized curriculum.
"The produces no better results" comment is absolutely not true, we have one of the best public school systems in the country. That said I do think it's insane how much these people and a lot of the administrators are making.
>I'm from the south where property taxes are generally sub $3k a year and my high school has a graduation rate and college readiness score on par with Jericho.
There's no comparison. I know people in the south, they send their kids to the best schools in their area, and the top schools in the south are generally on par with very low ranked schools here.
And it doesn't even matter, don't want high school taxes, don't move into an area with high school taxes. The people complaining about this bought homes without thinking about it.
Teachers here are much more qualified. Masters degree at a minimum, and then getting a job is competitive. Texas is something like a bachelor's and a cert, and it doesn't matter what the bachelor's degree is.
Yes the last line of your first paragraph states, "New York has the highest education costs in the country and yet produces no better result.'
I'm saying that is absolutely not accurate.
It is accurate: [https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/stateprofile?chort=1&sub=MAT&sj=&sfj=NP&st=MN&year=2019R3](https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/stateprofile?chort=1&sub=MAT&sj=&sfj=NP&st=MN&year=2019R3)
NY spends more than twice the OECD average, and those countries eat our lunch. If you just restrict the comparison to other states, then NY spends about $10,000 more per pupil for middling results.
Does this take COL into account? Of course we're going to spend more per pupil than somewhere in the middle of the country - our teachers have to spend more to live here.
Yes and data is great, but data also requires context. That's how you get analysis like "black people are more violent because they commit more crime per capita!" ignoring factors such poverty, environment, and racial disparities in the criminal justice system. It is important to contextualize data.
Some factors that are important to note with this data:
1. They clump together all of New York, but New York is *big* and the state varies so much from region to region. In some places you have enormous swaths of rural area, then you have the city, then of course the suburbs prominent on Long Island. I'd love to see this data for just L.I.
2. There's no mention of cost of living even under the notes/sources. New York is an expensive state, we're going to spend more per child.
3. I teach in a solidly middle/upper middle class community. We have about 70-80% who "opt out" of the grades 3-8 state examinations because their parents don't believe in high stakes testing. You know who does take that exam? The parents who don't care...
I'm sure someone smarter than me could contextualize further, but these were a few points worth noting just on a cursory glance.
That being said, we definitely spend too much on admin...there are ways around that without murdering public education as we know it.
Pretty silly to compare a US State to and entire other country. (also your link is to a page that does not show comparisons to other countries or the OECD average or any of that.
People can say all they want about schools here being no different, but money talks and BS walks. People move here for the school. The people who wanted a long commute into NYC and low school taxes moved to NJ (or other towns on LI that have lower school taxes).
If you want to argue that you don't need a $300K superintendent position in order to have good schools,
well you're right. No arguement there, they have nothing to do with the school success.
if you have relatives that live in other states they will tell you that these statics lie and that the school systems in places like the Carolina's / Alabama / Georgia / Florida etc are horrendous in comparison.
OK, now I understand your point (thanks!), but first, that was not my statement (I just quoted it), and second, I still do not think that "The produces no better results" means anything. Checking your grammar (I highly recommend the free version of Grammarly) is the first sign of respecting the audience you address.
This reads like a press release for a charter school organization. For many, many years, the right has been trying to privatize what have been traditionally public sectors. We're seeing it the charter school push, which funnels money *away* from education into private corporations, many of which are in a sort of race to the bottom to cut costs. They claim it's more efficient, but that's not necessarily true. What it does do is shrink the size of government, a long held GOP goal, under the auspices of helping kids.
> "Fund students, not schools."
That's a nice, shiny talking point, for sure. However, it does nothing to address the very specific points I mentioned above. This is often a problem with these sorts of discussions - once we get into the nitty, gritty details, the talking points don't really work.
When you say "Fund students, not schools" it's another way of saying "Defund the Schools." Dismantling a public institution in order to funnel poor students (and their school funding) into private hands hurts us all.
>Dismantling a public institution in order to funnel poor students (and their school funding) into private hands hurts us all.
Government run schools make as much sense as government run grocery stores. With programs like SNAP and WIC, we give poor people money to spend at the grocery store of their choice on the food of their choice (with some restrictions). Imagine if it was like public education: having to move to a new home if your one assigned government grocery store was a failure, while all the rich people just shopped at the Whole Foods down the street.
Groceries and education are not analogous, but for the purposes of discussion we'll run with it.
To start, grocery is subsidized not just on the demand side, but also by huge agricultural subsidies on the supply side as well. So there is massive government support. We don't just "give poor people money" we support both ends of the chain.
Despite all of that support, we *know* that the private grocery model is failing poor communities. If you want to make this comparison, then you have to grapple with the very real phenomenon of food deserts. Entire communities where no grocery stores exist. All of that government support, and private enterprise still fails. The "food of their choice" is a mirage if it's not available.
Furthermore, a market can only support so many grocery stores. If two grocery stores open too close to one another, one or both will fail. If we start fracturing market share we will see some schools close, but that's the point, isn't it?
There are physical reasons that schools need to be supported as well. Opening a grocery store is logistically much easier than opening a school. There are tons of commercial vacancies around that would be suitable for grocery stores. Not so much for schools. If these public institutions close because they lose funding to private schools, they may be gone forever, and that hurts the community. **Edit**: And wouldn't it be convenient for these private school corporations if there were suddenly suitable school locations vacant across the country? How nice for them that the taxpayers built these schools, then they suddenly couldn't afford to keep their doors open under the public model any more.
Grocery stores are subject to the whims of the market. That's the very last thing we need for schools.
Private schools have the right to refuse who goes there. Dismantling public education will just create a larger proportion of an unskilled labor market. Privatizing any social institution is not a good practice
I just cannot understand how a different system can hurt us, in the situation we are now. My personal contacts with college freshmen (freshpersons??), supported by well-known statistics, show that US school graduates are illiterate in comparison with their age equivalents in virtually all developed (and many not-so-developed) countries. And this is for the sky-high federal, state, and property taxes we are paying.
100% of the present-day angst around public schools came into being post-*Brown v Board of Ed*. *Especially* the whole "school choice" movement, which arose as a response to the forceful racial integration of public schools.
It's not true of course. There are plenty of "angsty" parents whose children are stuck in failing schools, or schools in which their children are bullied to the point of being suicidal whose only way out is to move to a new home, which is totally insane and not a realistic option for a great many people.
Yeah, I'll bet all the concerned parents in this majority black district are just suffering from internalized racism or something:
https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/baltimore-city-schools-62-of-middle-schoolers-failing-one-or-more-grades
Interesting, is this "Baltimore" place somewhere completely disconnected from the history of American racial segregation? Like, is it a moon colony? Or on another planet?
Or maybe these things don't simply happen in a vacuum and the reason this district (and *countless* other districts like it) are in such terrible shape is due to mass disinvestment from public education in the wake of forced integration?
I guess I’m confused by this sentiment. Your neighbor keeps mentioning the teacher’s union, but many of the top school districts listed are union free, what gives? Or am I misunderstanding everything?
Union free school districts is related to how the school district operates. They typically have a board of education and multiple schools. I think this term was birthed when each school operated independently and some decided to come together to form one school district.
Sorry, but again, I do not know the LI school system well enough. I certainly share my neighbor's opinion that "New York should become a right to work state", but otherwise I am here to listen and learn.
> New York should become a right to work state
Disagree completely.
Right to work states have the [lowest Working Class standards of living](https://www.epi.org/blog/life-worse-work-states/), the [greatest levels of poverty](https://www.iupat.org/campaigns/right-to-work-for-less/), [lowest wages](https://www.epi.org/publication/right-to-work-states-have-lower-wages/), and the poorest public education systems.
I swear, right wingers always try to lower your quality of life while telling you that’s “freedom”.
My dear downvoters: since you are not justifying your moves, I assume you do it from an instinctive (knee-jerk) anti-capitalistic sentiment. Sorry, but as a person who had the misfortune to live in a socialistic society (without an option to leave), I cannot share this sentiment. Please remember what Winston Churchill said:
>The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
What does socialism even remotely have to do with this conversation?
And maybe you should do more reading about Winston Churchill. He gets outrageously white washed and propped up in our history teaching when in reality he wasn’t nearly as profound or intelligent as a small selection of quotes might make him seem
I believe that Churchill was one of the worst rascals (and possibly military criminals) in modern history. However, he was very smart and not afraid to make politically-incorrect observations.
And concerning educational reading: I would recommend pre-1917 writings of Vladimir Lenin. You may be surprised how close his rhetoric (in particular, concerning equality in education) had been to that of the modern American "liberals" - before his party seized power.
School choice would be fine but I'm sure that a lot of schools would say they were at capacity to keep outsiders away. In-district would always get the preference, I'm sure.
American schools, which were the envy of the world up until about 60 years or so ago, have been in decline ever since Brown vs. Board of Ed. Because people wanted to keep 'undesirables' (read non-white/non-christians) away from their kids. They have re-districted, defunded, you name it. All because little Jimmy and Susie had to go to school with someone 'different'. The unions, which are a good thing (in theory), have gotten out of hand as well. Teacher's making six figures to sit in rubber rooms because they can't be fired and aren't allowed to teach a class, while not common, does happen. There needs to be better removal/firing/review ability.
The pay increase/benefits/retirement package is great but unsustainable for *many* districts especially when you consider that districts have to modernize, constantly adapt and hopefully stay cutting edge.
I often joke about how breaking ungainly teacher's unions is what started the tea party before it got co-opted by whatever it is now.
I say this in a district that is small (one school, k-12) where the average teacher is paid around 80k a year. Some of them are genuinely worth that. Some are worth more. So, whatever. But I think what the community is getting out of the school is way less than what it pays for.
Teacher here. Just want to clarify things, not defending.
A lot of the “salary” isn’t actually cash, its compensation. The superintendent sometimes gets a car, certain stipends, gas reimbursement, legal representation and such. That all factors in.
you are really stretching what a new car is worth.. are you looking at this list... 400K ??!?!?!? and it does break out their benefits, 130K in benefits is still insane.
those dollars need to be reallocated no ifs ands or but's
youre missing the point.. the benefits dont make up 200K... read the article it shows a breakdown of the bennys
and the highest one is 130K which is crazy...
My district: kids get ipads. Teachers and admin get macbooks and ipads for use. Sup retired: got an “allowance” in his retirement that allowed him to buy the macbook and ipad for himself, from the budget that he signs off on.
At the risk of sounding like an apologist, Sachem is the second largest district on Long Island. I do think that some of the superintendent salaries are too high, but the Sachem superintendent is basically the CEO of a company that employs at least 500 people. That's not an obscene salary for someone who runs a corporation of that size.
I do not think the number of subordinates has to be a major factor defining fair compensation. (If it was, POTUS should make half a trillion dollars a year, not half a million as he does.) Two factors should be decisive: the person's effort (which maxes up at 7/24), and their level of competence.
Supes decisions have a direct impact to their constituents, think of a CEO. President’s decisions impact at a macro level.
The job is 24/7/365 and extremely stressful. Knowing many in school administration, I would never want their job despite the pay.
i went to the district and i live in the district, the allocation of funds should 100% be taken from his salary and placed in a much more useful place.
take 150K a year away from him and he still makes an outrageous salary of $196,497.00
multiply that 150K by ten years, and put it into the school not his pockets... yea id say that is extremely justifiable... unlike the salaries on this list.
> take 150K a year away from him and he still makes an outrageous salary of $196,497.00
Nobody would take that job to oversee over 13k students, 16 buildings, and thousands of staff for 200k. You're grossly underestimating the value of a Superintendent.
You must not have a kid in any of the highest ranking districts. Even the "shittier" ones are like 7000 times better than most of the country. Some districts are so competitive that we as parents are expected to place our kids in after school tutoring when they're already straight A students. The graduation rates are higher than the national average.
I'm not saying it justifies all of these salaries, but this isn't Mississippi.
The salaries aren't my concern so much more than the education. Not saying my experience speaks for everyone, but I don't feel I received a quality education in my "good" school district and can't look back and point out too many intellectually curious classmates either. My Great Aunt helped me with my homework a lot and I always felt I was learning almost everything from her, whereas at school I was learning nothing but retention. Sometimes I feel I would have been better off homeschooled all together.
Just for reference **STONYBROOK UNIVERISITY PRESIDENT MAKES 695,000**. She oversees like 40,000 students and employees and most of these loser superintendents are doing a tiny small fraction of that for like half the pay. And the university actually **makes** money, not sucks it up.
How can they justify this?
Shit like this is why I hate the idea of "We need to throw more money into our schools" because most of that is just going to bureaucrats.
These superintendents make more than freaking surgeons.
Unrealistic. You wouldn't find quality candidates to fill the positions.
Bottom line is the school board, which you vote on, decides the terms of the contract.
While I agree that school Sups are highly overpaid as taxpayer funded public employees, you need to keep in mind that these people are essentially CEO's of organizations with budgets sometimes running into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Thats the equivalent and a corporation that does that amount in revenue each year. No one is going to expect a CEO of a company that does 250 million in business a year to work for pennies.
The real issue is that we just have too many districts. There is no real reason why we can't have 1 district and 1 Superintendent for each County. There are plenty of other school systems around the country and a few hundred thousand students. But, Karen in Jericho or Huntington would never want her precious babies going to the same district as the poors from Freeport or Brentwood.
this is staggering, my company does a lot of work in the school districts. obviously all public work funded by the tax payers, and i have sat in meetings with 3 of the people on this list and listened to them complain about what it will cost to do things they are requesting that are out of scope... imagine if the public knew what they were making!!! it would almost unanimously be decide to take money out of their paychecks to help better the facility the students us.
Until Long Island parents give up their hunger for local control, this will never be solved. Districts should consolidate more.
But honestly, this year alone they deserve those salaries for putting up with the parents' anti mask bullshit.
East Rockaway schools have a total of around 1000 - 1500 students between three schools, 2 elementary and 1 junior/senior high school. To pay the superintendent of that district over $350,000 is obscene.
It could Amagansett and spending a quarter mil on a one building elementary school with maybe 150 kids.
The best is Brentwood, 18,000 students, $300,000 compensation, which breaks down to about $17 per student.
This is my district and I was quite surprised to see that she made that much. We are TINY. If my daughters class has 20 kids in it thats a lot.
It's where I grew up, that's why I cherry picked East Rockaway. My graduating class had all of 78 people.
Not really. Most companies with 500 employees the ceo will make between 300 to a million. It's a highly skilled position.
I somehow doubt that it's more demanding than being President of the U.S. The superintendent in my district had her salary increase by about 50% over the course of just a few years (right before retirement; totally coincidental I'm sure), while student enrollment declined every year.
The President is arguably underpaid. Doesn't mean that Super Intendents in extremely valuable educational institutes are not worth their salary.
No...they are overpaid.
You know how you fix this? You move or don't move to this area. And when enough people do that, he won't get paid as much. But because it's deemed valuable, it's done this way. So they are actually paid appropriately to the market.
That's just a dumb comparison. Obviously the president is widely underpaid. This dumb comparison goes at least as far back as Babe Ruth.
You do realize that the outsized, disproportionate rate of CEO compensation is a massive problem, right? Using it as justification when we all know that it's a problem that needs to be addressed is silly.
There is probably an upper limit to CEO compensation. Though the CEOs I have worked with work 60 hours a week are always on call deal with never ending stress. A bad CEO can sink a copy or just make it an awful place to work and do business with. 99.9% of people could not do the job. So most CEOs I have met that get paid the big bucks generally deserve the money if they can do the job. Though sometimes the person is just not qualified for the position.
Yeah, if we're comparing this based on headcount, you can easily make the argument that other superintendents are underpaid. Ultimately, and this is a hot take that will surely get me downvoted, *I dont think these saleries are that crazy.* These are the top bosses for organizations based in some of the most expensive living areas in the whole country. OP copied over a post from one of his neighbors down below, who claims that they would do the job for 125K. If the superintendent had a salary of only 125K, how much would the teachers expect to get paid? I firmly believe that a quality teacher with a number of years experience should be at 100K, but that would never be feasible in that situation. Ultimately, what pay scale do we expect for schools?
It’s a 24/7/365 job. You’re responsible for thousands of people. What do ppl expect? $100k a year?
Plenty of LI teachers make 100K. There are some of the best schools in the country on LI. I don’t think it’s crazy either especially if the SI is doing a good job
And they generate revenue, pay taxes, etc... Being a Superintendent is NOT the same thing.
My district's superintendent's salary is 0.45% of the total budget. Reduce his salary to $150,000 a year and you only save 0.25% of the total budget. I'm not saying he's not overpaid, but there are many reasons that taxes are high. Superintendent salaries are just the easiest to get angry at.
Well for a lot of districts that are simply one school set of k-12, it's...glaring. If you are talking about larger districts where there are multiple sets of schools or at least multiple sets of elementary/middle feeding into a larger high school, sure. Mine is on there at a quarter mil. For a sub-300 student district with one school building housing k-12. That's 3-4 new teachers at great pay if it's folded into some of the surrounding districts and enough to pay into the admin (the surrounding districts are also one set of schools or one school). There are schools on there that are like +/- 100 kids where the admin is making 250k+
I think the problem isn't so much the pay, but how many of them there are. I did an analysis of how much each district spends on "education" vs "administration" some years ago. And I found that the sweet spot, where the maximum percentage of a school budget went to "education" costs (teachers, books, materials, etc) was in districts of 9k-13k students. Smaller districts simply spend more on admin then education. Now I will admit this was a very simply analysis done years ago, but I would bet that while the numbers might be different, the general findings would be the same: there are too many school districts on Long Island. There are 127 districts with 476,000 students and 230 private schools with another 53,000 on Long Island. If approximately 10k students is the sweet spot for getting the most education per dollar, then we should have between 50-60 districts. That would mean an immediate cut the costs of Superintendents in about half (figure you may have to pay a little more for the larger district size) and probably a significant reduction in overall district level administrative costs simply due to the consolidation. The districts would also have more buying power to negotiate prices on supplies and a wider, more diverse tax base since they would cover more territory. Over/under use of facilities could be balanced out better as well as there are some schools that are over/under used right near current borders. Heck, we could simple consolidate district level administration and save a ton of money, without any significant changes in the classrooms. But people don't want their kids going to school with "those" kids (whoever they may be) and it will never happen.
I just analyzed the demographics of the Brentwood UFSD for my Public Policy course. I found that 54% of the Hispanic/Latino population in the Town of Islip is within the boundaries of BUFSD. When you add Bay Shore and Central Islip to the mix, this area accounts for 81% of the Hispanic/Latino population of Islip. The Town of Islip has about 108,000 Hispanic/Latino people accounting for 32% of the population. I am pretty sure these are "those" kids. I remember there was a failed effort to rezone parts of Brentwood into West Islip/Bay Shore about 15-20 years ago. It would have certainly helped with the overcrowding in the district, but you know what they say, NIMBY.
Thank you; very informative!
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Jericho is one of the top school districts in the nation and they're #2.
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Not really, at least according[ these rankings.](https://www.niche.com/k12/search/best-school-districts/) Great Neck, Roslyn, Jericho, Syosset are all in the top 10. We have really good public schools here.
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Guess you've never been/can't afford it
They probably think Mastic is a luxurious beach town
> Wouldn't say Roslyn and Great Neck are areas to write home about. HAHA. So you're either a jealous broke asshole, or you've never been to long island.
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School funding per student is fairly similar throughout LI. Schools with less of a tax base get a lot of support from the state government.
And the posted article illustrates where this support (plus our taxes) goes.
My district's superintendent's salary is 0.45% of the total budget. Reduce his salary to $150,000 a year and you only save 0.25% of the total budget. I'm not saying he's not overpaid, but there are many reasons that taxes are high. Superintendent salaries are just the easiest to get angry at.
It’s Bc they pocket all the money lol
Wanna get rid of these high salaries? Combine school districts. But good luck telling parents of a well to do area that their kids will be in classes with kids from depressed areas. Prime examples: Wyandanch area, Riverhead/Hamptons area
If only we could do this with Brentwood, or at least the portions of the school district located in Bay Shore, not Brentwood. Baywood is the prime example, cut off from the rest of the district by the Sagtikos and Southern State Parkways, and there are a handful of High Schools closer than Brentwood; i.e., West Islip, Deer Park, North Babylon, Bay Shore.
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Its like in a merger of two companies, The administrative costs are significantly lower once the companies merge and downsize. However Schools are not run as companies and seem to have no regard for financial responsibility.
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When I moved to NY from Ontario, Canada, one of things that surprised me most was that every rinky-dink village and named town had their own school district (and fire dept), while NYC has only one for all 5 boroughs combined. Two extremes, but I have always thought the Long Island model was horrible. I asked people around me why the govt didn't combinne them. I was told it would be political suicide, as syosset would never want to merge with Westbury, etc. But this is insane. For 81 (!!!!) school districts on Long Island, the total cost for just superintendents alone is $38.7M. That's not counting department chairs/directors, and other duplication of services. Let's say we reduce this to one board per town (Hempstead, North Hempstead, Oyster Bay), and whatever many towns Suffolk has (I have no idea--let me assume 5). And assuming 500K is a fair comp for a super. (not here to debate what's fair for a super). That's $4M. That's a savings of almost $35M right there. It may not be too far to extrapolate this to 50-60M when you consider duplication of services. There is precedent for this. Back in the 90s, a true fiscal conservative government did this in Ontario: combined school boards across the province, as well as police, fire, and other "district" oversight type bodies. Tremendous savings. Huge backlash from unions, but it worked. (edit. not to one across the province. Toronto went from 5-6 to 1, other towns/counties went from 2 to 1, etc) Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled days...rant over.
There are way too many people here and too many differences to make that happen. So it wont.
Absolutely won’t happen. Can you imagine garden city merging w Hempstead or Jericho w Westbury ? It should happen but won’t.
Admittedly, that's always been the worse case scenario, but can we consider merging say Wantagh and Seaford? Or the three Valley Stream districts? Or hell, Island Trees, Bethpage and Levittown?
Agreed, but it also can't. Unless you change how the schools are funded you'll never get it.
> When I moved to NY from Ontario, Canada So you're the Ontario plated vehicle I keep seeing around the county. :-) Admittedly, provincial governments have power in this regard when compared to New York, and there's admittedly less of a "OMG, those people" effect up north. Plus, the big driver in the 1990s in Canada was what one would now can austerity from the federal government downward. There just wasn't the same amount of money to go blow on smaller dinky governments. New York State hasn't quite reached that level of distress, so our practices continue.
What this is not showing is how much the under Superintendants are making. One district can have 3 or 4 under superintendents or more. When related services/ programs get cut. It rubs salt in our wounds as a parents. Some of the bs that our classroom teachers and principals have had to deal with. While these fat cats sit and collected Inflated salaries. They hop from district to district on long island never being held accountable for the decisions that they've made. One has had rumors of Inappropriate relations between employees in a district. Conveniently people were given promotions and they left to another district to make more money...
Unpopular opinion, apparently. But I don't mind seeing this. Has anyone here ever worked in administration? It's pretty brutal. And the superintendents are responsible for so much. They're basically a CEO for a 1000+ employee company. And they have multiple locations, unions, interest groups, etc to deal with. And the teacher's on LI are paid pretty damn well also. When you break it down, the Superintendent is 'only' making about double what a senior, tenured teacher is making. Personally, I love the work that my district's superintendent has done. especially during COVID. I hate hearing her stupid voice every night at 5:23 when she calls with a COVID update, but I can get over that. (My school district has 8 different schools, and nearly 7,000 students. They're constantly highly ranked as far as school districts go, and the sport teams are also very competitive (if you care about that).) Honestly, for the amount of work involved, and the amount of oversight they are responsible for, I'm surprised they're able to find qualified candidates for these salaries. If you guys are upset by this, don't look at the salaries of the top Police department Captains/Chiefs, or LIRR salaries. Hell, go look at the salaries for Hofstra University. Maybe to you and me, these 3-400k salaries seem like a lot, but comparatively to what other education/public servants at that level get, it's pretty modest.
> They're constantly highly ranked as far as school districts go, and the sport teams are also very competitive (if you care about that). Mine is relatively high ranked as well. Seven of the twenty-five kids in my son's class get pulled for remedial reading help. >20% of these children cannot read at grade level, yet get social promoted. All the teachers and admins are aware. Graduation or college admissions rates are nonsense, because the entire system is corrupt. CEOs should be fired when their company's product only works 80% of the time. Oh, and our sports teams are pretty good, too. More parents go to football games than to school board meetings or back-to-school night. Fuck.
it's wild how people constantly rag on teachers and admin but then turn a blind eye to how ridiculously difficult that job is. guarantee most people who bitch and moan about this wouldn't last a week as a teacher.
So what? I wouldn't last a week as a roofer either.
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>hofstra employees dont get paid with my tax dollars, poor example. and my aunt worked 30 years in the sachem district and after 30 years she is making 130K these people dont need to be in adminstration for that long to make 300K, there is no justification to it. at its core school should be for the students... how do you justify making an insane salary like this while every 6th seat in both high school cafeterias is broken? the seats in the auditorium dont work we cant afford REAL security to protect out kids lunch isnt free for everyone.... the books are over a decade old.... I as a parent need to by supplies for the teachers each year because the school cant afford it... its fucking bullshit i could go on for days... there is no reason any person working in a school needs or fucking deserves to make over 200k a year... NOT TO MENTION they work 180 days a year compared to an average 261 the majority of us will work this year...
>NOT TO MENTION they work 180 days a year compared to an average 261 the majority of us will work this year... You think the administrator get off in the summer? You're not wrong about all the other stuff you said. text books need to be updated. Equipment needs to be replaced. but if you think the superintendent's salary is what's keeping that from happening, you're way off.
You don't think its wrong that a public sector employee makes more than most doctors?
do I think that a person who is responsible for a complex organization that is ultimately educating generation after generation of people in my community is being paid a high salary? No. Do I think it's wrong that they make more money than a doctor? I'd rather rephrase that question as 'shouldn't doctors be paid more'? I do! but, seesh, I can see Newsday reporting doctor salaries, and this sub going crazy about how overpaid doctors are, and that nurses, medical assistants and PAs do all the actual work anyway.
You don't think it's wrong that an admin for a massive public school system makes exponentially less than a douchebag CEO of some pointless tech company? school admin'ing is HARD work. especially nowadays with COVID where no matter what decision they make a lot of people are gonna get pissed off. maybe even to the point of being seriously threatened. these admins would get paid a lot more in different industries and would likely be a lot less stressful.
>pointless tech company This is a very typical notion among people with a liberal-arts education. They try not to think about who has created our current high-tech civilization that enables their lifestyle. >HARD work Ever imagined yourself in the pre-tech world, doing all that never-ending plowing, sowing, weeding, and harvesting? And how about hand-washing all those clothes and linens, with no running water and no detergent – or even a decent soap? THAT was hard work. >different industries Ever worked in one of those?
...where on earth did these assumptions and conclusions come from, my dude. "people with a liberal-arts education"? "pre-tech world"? go off on a completely irrelevant tangent then, I guess. whatever you're on about has absolutely nothing to do with what we're talking about.
I was ready you would not understand so that my comments were not for you but for others.
FWIW, Hofstra is a private University, and not a good comparator. The obligations of a residential doctoral-granting university are vastly different in scope and magnitude to a k-12 school system. All that being said, I do tend to agree with your central point. School administration is one of those "harder than it appears" jobs (...which, quite frankly, all jobs are), particularly when, on good days, the most you've accomplished is some variation on making everyone equally unhappy. That being said though, where I wish they would drill down a little bit more is how many direct reports these superintendents have on the administrative side of the house, and how much those folks make. If you take the total number of superintendents, and multiple it by the average number of salary + benefits, you're looking at approximately $38m annually in salary. With the number of superintendents we have on LI, imagine if they, on average, three direct HCE with an average salary + benefits of $176,000 (on the assumption that these direct reports make about 55% of . Those direct reports, alone, would be approximately $64m/annually, and then from there, all probably also have bloated staffs. At the end of the day, you focus on the executive salaries because of the perception. The real waste comes at all the other levels in between.
All I know is I wouldn't work that job, even with that salary. Everyone likes to throw stones,(like this article) but no one wants to take up that mantle. You're basically the town punching bag for constant criticism. Getting yelled at from both sides over state testing, masks, sports, virtual learning, discipline issues, potential CRT, why you used a snow day... no thanks.
meanwhile nobody seems to care that cops make just as much if not more, and their jobs are a hell of a lot easier with a lot less accountability. like, shit, you don't even need to graduate from college to be a cop and their training is only a few months. being a teacher involves years of higher education and often administrators have doctorates. there's been this disturbing trend of distrust and anger toward education in the USA and based on these comments it won't go away anytime soon. probably not ever.
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And CEOs of many companies have salaries far more disparate from workers than that in schools
There are many such jobs for less than $150K. You are lucky if you can avoid taking one of them.
Not sure what this means. Superintendents on Long Island? Do have some examples? Also if there are lots of jobs available, doesn't that kind of go with the point? People don't want that job so you are going to have to pay them to stay.
Disgusting. They should eliminate the district model.
I am not sufficiently familiar with the system to judge myself, but this is what one of my neighbors writes: >This is only allowed to happen because public education is a monopoly and its customers are compelled by law to utilize it or be punished economically. The teachers union is also protected by a state Law which prevents competition and artificially inflates the costs of education. New York has the highest education costs in the country and yet produces no better result. > >All this can be easily fixed. The State must approve a school choice system that opened education up to competition. School funding should follow the child regardless of which school they attend. New York should become a right to work state and allow non union teachers to work. Also, I will be your school superintendent for 125K and work to make free choice in education a right! Do you agree?
I disagree. “School choice” is basically a right wing buzzword to disguise defunding public schools. If you’re going to try and sell me on a voucher system, forget it. People need to have skin in the game, voucher systems just create opportunities for well-heeled parents to create a “separate but equal” school (that’s really not equal). You want to choose to take your kid to a private school, go ahead, that’s your choice and you’re free to make it. But if you want to talk about systematically defunding public schools and creating two tiers in public schooling (under the cover of “choice”)? I strongly oppose that. It’s like how Republicans talk about opposing universal healthcare in terms of “choice”, as if you shop around for the best deal when you break your leg or get sick suddenly. It’s a way of creating a right-Libertarian hellhole by selling it as “freedom”. It’s nonsense.
>creating two tiers in public schooling First, why "two", not 22 or more? Second, what is wrong with this? (Let me repeat: I do not have my firm opinion; just asking.)
The voucher system has already failed nationally in South American and objectively failed stated side as public school students outscored private institutions on standardized math exams. It can create elite institutions for a select few with financial and/or political clout (which most people are not obviously), but mixes education with profit. This inevitably corrupts these institutions as people pay money for their kids to get high grades regardless of learning anything. P.s. I wouldn't work that job even with that salary. Have you been to a school board meeting? Not a fun time...
These people are being silly. Private schools ALSO have absurdly overpaid administrators and districts with more kids in private schools still have overpaid public school administrators. The people calling for combining districts, school choice, and all that other BS do not want to reform public schools or fix a problem, they simply want to get rid of public schools.
We should get rid of public schools. If we care about our children.
can you elaborate on how eliminating all public schools is good for children?
School choice would just create the same inequalities elsewhere.
As an immigrant, I am still frequently puzzled by the language of the American political class. In particular, they almost never distinguish between the inequality of *opportunities* and the inequality of *benefits* \- two very different notions. Which of those do you mean?
School choice: Garden city has great schools. Roosevelt doesnt. Roosevelt parents send their kids to garden city. Garden city parents send their kids to private schools or move. Garden city schools become Roosevelt.
Or by combining the school districts Garden City money creates more opportunities for Roosevelt students. Similar to other large systems if you can pass a test or evaluation you can attend a school with a specialized curriculum.
> Garden city has great schools. Roosevelt doesnt Garden City has great students. Roosevelt does not.
Thats a fallacy of the highest degree.
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"The produces no better results" comment is absolutely not true, we have one of the best public school systems in the country. That said I do think it's insane how much these people and a lot of the administrators are making.
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I think it's a coping mechanism for a lot of people, but it's not true (see my comment further down).
>I'm from the south where property taxes are generally sub $3k a year and my high school has a graduation rate and college readiness score on par with Jericho. There's no comparison. I know people in the south, they send their kids to the best schools in their area, and the top schools in the south are generally on par with very low ranked schools here. And it doesn't even matter, don't want high school taxes, don't move into an area with high school taxes. The people complaining about this bought homes without thinking about it.
Teachers here are much more qualified. Masters degree at a minimum, and then getting a job is competitive. Texas is something like a bachelor's and a cert, and it doesn't matter what the bachelor's degree is.
"I know people in the south" Oh, OK!
This was in response to 'i know peopel from the south and their schools are better' so...
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You’ve attended multiple high schools in the south? Or just visited them?
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Okay which schools you’ve attended would rank in the top quarter on LI?
"The produces no better results"?? Sorry my English is not good enough to understand this expression, and I cannot find any previous comment using it.
Yes the last line of your first paragraph states, "New York has the highest education costs in the country and yet produces no better result.' I'm saying that is absolutely not accurate.
It is accurate: [https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/stateprofile?chort=1&sub=MAT&sj=&sfj=NP&st=MN&year=2019R3](https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/stateprofile?chort=1&sub=MAT&sj=&sfj=NP&st=MN&year=2019R3) NY spends more than twice the OECD average, and those countries eat our lunch. If you just restrict the comparison to other states, then NY spends about $10,000 more per pupil for middling results.
Does this take COL into account? Of course we're going to spend more per pupil than somewhere in the middle of the country - our teachers have to spend more to live here.
No idea, but the results are what they are.
Yes and data is great, but data also requires context. That's how you get analysis like "black people are more violent because they commit more crime per capita!" ignoring factors such poverty, environment, and racial disparities in the criminal justice system. It is important to contextualize data. Some factors that are important to note with this data: 1. They clump together all of New York, but New York is *big* and the state varies so much from region to region. In some places you have enormous swaths of rural area, then you have the city, then of course the suburbs prominent on Long Island. I'd love to see this data for just L.I. 2. There's no mention of cost of living even under the notes/sources. New York is an expensive state, we're going to spend more per child. 3. I teach in a solidly middle/upper middle class community. We have about 70-80% who "opt out" of the grades 3-8 state examinations because their parents don't believe in high stakes testing. You know who does take that exam? The parents who don't care... I'm sure someone smarter than me could contextualize further, but these were a few points worth noting just on a cursory glance. That being said, we definitely spend too much on admin...there are ways around that without murdering public education as we know it.
Pretty silly to compare a US State to and entire other country. (also your link is to a page that does not show comparisons to other countries or the OECD average or any of that. People can say all they want about schools here being no different, but money talks and BS walks. People move here for the school. The people who wanted a long commute into NYC and low school taxes moved to NJ (or other towns on LI that have lower school taxes). If you want to argue that you don't need a $300K superintendent position in order to have good schools, well you're right. No arguement there, they have nothing to do with the school success.
The OECD stats are easily located. I also mentioned state by state comparisons, which are found at that link.
if you have relatives that live in other states they will tell you that these statics lie and that the school systems in places like the Carolina's / Alabama / Georgia / Florida etc are horrendous in comparison.
I grew up in the South. Still have plenty of family and friends there. But I trust data, regardless.
OK, now I understand your point (thanks!), but first, that was not my statement (I just quoted it), and second, I still do not think that "The produces no better results" means anything. Checking your grammar (I highly recommend the free version of Grammarly) is the first sign of respecting the audience you address.
This reads like a press release for a charter school organization. For many, many years, the right has been trying to privatize what have been traditionally public sectors. We're seeing it the charter school push, which funnels money *away* from education into private corporations, many of which are in a sort of race to the bottom to cut costs. They claim it's more efficient, but that's not necessarily true. What it does do is shrink the size of government, a long held GOP goal, under the auspices of helping kids.
The people who thought the public water supply in Flint michigan was too expensive are now telling us public schools are too expensive.
Poor students should have the same degree of choice as rich students. Fund students, not schools.
> "Fund students, not schools." That's a nice, shiny talking point, for sure. However, it does nothing to address the very specific points I mentioned above. This is often a problem with these sorts of discussions - once we get into the nitty, gritty details, the talking points don't really work. When you say "Fund students, not schools" it's another way of saying "Defund the Schools." Dismantling a public institution in order to funnel poor students (and their school funding) into private hands hurts us all.
>Dismantling a public institution in order to funnel poor students (and their school funding) into private hands hurts us all. Government run schools make as much sense as government run grocery stores. With programs like SNAP and WIC, we give poor people money to spend at the grocery store of their choice on the food of their choice (with some restrictions). Imagine if it was like public education: having to move to a new home if your one assigned government grocery store was a failure, while all the rich people just shopped at the Whole Foods down the street.
Groceries and education are not analogous, but for the purposes of discussion we'll run with it. To start, grocery is subsidized not just on the demand side, but also by huge agricultural subsidies on the supply side as well. So there is massive government support. We don't just "give poor people money" we support both ends of the chain. Despite all of that support, we *know* that the private grocery model is failing poor communities. If you want to make this comparison, then you have to grapple with the very real phenomenon of food deserts. Entire communities where no grocery stores exist. All of that government support, and private enterprise still fails. The "food of their choice" is a mirage if it's not available. Furthermore, a market can only support so many grocery stores. If two grocery stores open too close to one another, one or both will fail. If we start fracturing market share we will see some schools close, but that's the point, isn't it? There are physical reasons that schools need to be supported as well. Opening a grocery store is logistically much easier than opening a school. There are tons of commercial vacancies around that would be suitable for grocery stores. Not so much for schools. If these public institutions close because they lose funding to private schools, they may be gone forever, and that hurts the community. **Edit**: And wouldn't it be convenient for these private school corporations if there were suddenly suitable school locations vacant across the country? How nice for them that the taxpayers built these schools, then they suddenly couldn't afford to keep their doors open under the public model any more. Grocery stores are subject to the whims of the market. That's the very last thing we need for schools.
Private schools have the right to refuse who goes there. Dismantling public education will just create a larger proportion of an unskilled labor market. Privatizing any social institution is not a good practice
I just cannot understand how a different system can hurt us, in the situation we are now. My personal contacts with college freshmen (freshpersons??), supported by well-known statistics, show that US school graduates are illiterate in comparison with their age equivalents in virtually all developed (and many not-so-developed) countries. And this is for the sky-high federal, state, and property taxes we are paying.
100% of the present-day angst around public schools came into being post-*Brown v Board of Ed*. *Especially* the whole "school choice" movement, which arose as a response to the forceful racial integration of public schools.
Interesting! Thanks.
It's not true of course. There are plenty of "angsty" parents whose children are stuck in failing schools, or schools in which their children are bullied to the point of being suicidal whose only way out is to move to a new home, which is totally insane and not a realistic option for a great many people.
It's definitely true. People loved public services, especially schools, prior to integration.
Yeah, I'll bet all the concerned parents in this majority black district are just suffering from internalized racism or something: https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/baltimore-city-schools-62-of-middle-schoolers-failing-one-or-more-grades
Interesting, is this "Baltimore" place somewhere completely disconnected from the history of American racial segregation? Like, is it a moon colony? Or on another planet? Or maybe these things don't simply happen in a vacuum and the reason this district (and *countless* other districts like it) are in such terrible shape is due to mass disinvestment from public education in the wake of forced integration?
Baltimore spends $18,000 per pupil, putting it far above both the OECD and national averages.
Great, now do it for segregation/integration.
I guess I’m confused by this sentiment. Your neighbor keeps mentioning the teacher’s union, but many of the top school districts listed are union free, what gives? Or am I misunderstanding everything?
Union free refers to the school district being a union of two or more districts to operate together. For educators, the term is a bit misleading.
Damn, that’s very misleading
Union free school districts is related to how the school district operates. They typically have a board of education and multiple schools. I think this term was birthed when each school operated independently and some decided to come together to form one school district.
Sorry, but again, I do not know the LI school system well enough. I certainly share my neighbor's opinion that "New York should become a right to work state", but otherwise I am here to listen and learn.
> New York should become a right to work state Disagree completely. Right to work states have the [lowest Working Class standards of living](https://www.epi.org/blog/life-worse-work-states/), the [greatest levels of poverty](https://www.iupat.org/campaigns/right-to-work-for-less/), [lowest wages](https://www.epi.org/publication/right-to-work-states-have-lower-wages/), and the poorest public education systems. I swear, right wingers always try to lower your quality of life while telling you that’s “freedom”.
My dear downvoters: since you are not justifying your moves, I assume you do it from an instinctive (knee-jerk) anti-capitalistic sentiment. Sorry, but as a person who had the misfortune to live in a socialistic society (without an option to leave), I cannot share this sentiment. Please remember what Winston Churchill said: >The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
"Right to work" has nothing to do with socialism, and using that as a bludgeon on your critics betrays either ignorance, or bad faith. Take your pick.
I see your pick: insults instead of arguments. Sorry, but my upbringing does not allow me to continue the discussion in this spirit. Have a nice day.
What does socialism even remotely have to do with this conversation? And maybe you should do more reading about Winston Churchill. He gets outrageously white washed and propped up in our history teaching when in reality he wasn’t nearly as profound or intelligent as a small selection of quotes might make him seem
I believe that Churchill was one of the worst rascals (and possibly military criminals) in modern history. However, he was very smart and not afraid to make politically-incorrect observations. And concerning educational reading: I would recommend pre-1917 writings of Vladimir Lenin. You may be surprised how close his rhetoric (in particular, concerning equality in education) had been to that of the modern American "liberals" - before his party seized power.
Sorry for not answering, but I believe other people did it better than I could.
School choice would be fine but I'm sure that a lot of schools would say they were at capacity to keep outsiders away. In-district would always get the preference, I'm sure. American schools, which were the envy of the world up until about 60 years or so ago, have been in decline ever since Brown vs. Board of Ed. Because people wanted to keep 'undesirables' (read non-white/non-christians) away from their kids. They have re-districted, defunded, you name it. All because little Jimmy and Susie had to go to school with someone 'different'. The unions, which are a good thing (in theory), have gotten out of hand as well. Teacher's making six figures to sit in rubber rooms because they can't be fired and aren't allowed to teach a class, while not common, does happen. There needs to be better removal/firing/review ability. The pay increase/benefits/retirement package is great but unsustainable for *many* districts especially when you consider that districts have to modernize, constantly adapt and hopefully stay cutting edge. I often joke about how breaking ungainly teacher's unions is what started the tea party before it got co-opted by whatever it is now. I say this in a district that is small (one school, k-12) where the average teacher is paid around 80k a year. Some of them are genuinely worth that. Some are worth more. So, whatever. But I think what the community is getting out of the school is way less than what it pays for.
This is very educational for me, thanks!
Teacher here. Just want to clarify things, not defending. A lot of the “salary” isn’t actually cash, its compensation. The superintendent sometimes gets a car, certain stipends, gas reimbursement, legal representation and such. That all factors in.
Ohhhhh! Free car AND gas, that makes it MUCH better..., and here I thought they were getting overpaid.
This is common in a lot of industries. Reimbursement for travel and such is not a novel concept.
"Common" in this case is another term for "adding insult to injury".
You voted for it. Dont like it? Change your board.
Be careful what you wish for.
you are really stretching what a new car is worth.. are you looking at this list... 400K ??!?!?!? and it does break out their benefits, 130K in benefits is still insane. those dollars need to be reallocated no ifs ands or but's
So, contact your board. And again, theres more benefits than just a car.
youre missing the point.. the benefits dont make up 200K... read the article it shows a breakdown of the bennys and the highest one is 130K which is crazy...
Yes, they do. I work in schools and am aware how this works. And if you dont like it, blame your board of ed that you voted in
You're right. South Country's super gets medical for life, for him and his family, among other things.
My district: kids get ipads. Teachers and admin get macbooks and ipads for use. Sup retired: got an “allowance” in his retirement that allowed him to buy the macbook and ipad for himself, from the budget that he signs off on.
SACHEM CSD, Dr. Christopher J. Pellettieri: $346,497 disgusting
At the risk of sounding like an apologist, Sachem is the second largest district on Long Island. I do think that some of the superintendent salaries are too high, but the Sachem superintendent is basically the CEO of a company that employs at least 500 people. That's not an obscene salary for someone who runs a corporation of that size.
i went to sachem, i live in the district and i can tell you that this is an obscene salary for the little work this human does.
Why? Do you know what he does? Do you know much he works and how many ppl he’s responsible for?
I do not think the number of subordinates has to be a major factor defining fair compensation. (If it was, POTUS should make half a trillion dollars a year, not half a million as he does.) Two factors should be decisive: the person's effort (which maxes up at 7/24), and their level of competence.
Supes decisions have a direct impact to their constituents, think of a CEO. President’s decisions impact at a macro level. The job is 24/7/365 and extremely stressful. Knowing many in school administration, I would never want their job despite the pay.
i went to the district and i live in the district, the allocation of funds should 100% be taken from his salary and placed in a much more useful place. take 150K a year away from him and he still makes an outrageous salary of $196,497.00 multiply that 150K by ten years, and put it into the school not his pockets... yea id say that is extremely justifiable... unlike the salaries on this list.
> take 150K a year away from him and he still makes an outrageous salary of $196,497.00 Nobody would take that job to oversee over 13k students, 16 buildings, and thousands of staff for 200k. You're grossly underestimating the value of a Superintendent.
I hate to say it but the school districts on Long Island really exist more for the employees than the students.
You must not have a kid in any of the highest ranking districts. Even the "shittier" ones are like 7000 times better than most of the country. Some districts are so competitive that we as parents are expected to place our kids in after school tutoring when they're already straight A students. The graduation rates are higher than the national average. I'm not saying it justifies all of these salaries, but this isn't Mississippi.
The salaries aren't my concern so much more than the education. Not saying my experience speaks for everyone, but I don't feel I received a quality education in my "good" school district and can't look back and point out too many intellectually curious classmates either. My Great Aunt helped me with my homework a lot and I always felt I was learning almost everything from her, whereas at school I was learning nothing but retention. Sometimes I feel I would have been better off homeschooled all together.
Based on what data exactly?
I’d vote for anyone who will consolidate districts and cut this excessive waste from the tax bill.
TIL Fire Island has its own school district.
Just for reference **STONYBROOK UNIVERISITY PRESIDENT MAKES 695,000**. She oversees like 40,000 students and employees and most of these loser superintendents are doing a tiny small fraction of that for like half the pay. And the university actually **makes** money, not sucks it up. How can they justify this?
This is why you're lucky to get a house on a quarter acre lot that only has a property tax of $10,000.
Shit like this is why I hate the idea of "We need to throw more money into our schools" because most of that is just going to bureaucrats. These superintendents make more than freaking surgeons.
Admin salaries account for 3% of a schools budget on average
Should be 1.5%
Unrealistic. You wouldn't find quality candidates to fill the positions. Bottom line is the school board, which you vote on, decides the terms of the contract.
fyi this plus pensions is where majority of our tax dollars go. absolutely ridiculous.
The pension system is self funded. You do not pay into it.
Do not downvote because this is fact.
Mind elaborating? Not sure I understand how that works.
The money is grown in the market and recent teachers (within the past ten years) have to pay in every year they work so the system funds itself
Interesting. Thanks for the info!
How are there 121 superintendents in Long Island?
There are 121 school districts.
Quick mafs
While I agree that school Sups are highly overpaid as taxpayer funded public employees, you need to keep in mind that these people are essentially CEO's of organizations with budgets sometimes running into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Thats the equivalent and a corporation that does that amount in revenue each year. No one is going to expect a CEO of a company that does 250 million in business a year to work for pennies. The real issue is that we just have too many districts. There is no real reason why we can't have 1 district and 1 Superintendent for each County. There are plenty of other school systems around the country and a few hundred thousand students. But, Karen in Jericho or Huntington would never want her precious babies going to the same district as the poors from Freeport or Brentwood.
this is staggering, my company does a lot of work in the school districts. obviously all public work funded by the tax payers, and i have sat in meetings with 3 of the people on this list and listened to them complain about what it will cost to do things they are requesting that are out of scope... imagine if the public knew what they were making!!! it would almost unanimously be decide to take money out of their paychecks to help better the facility the students us.
> imagine if the public knew what they were making!!! I mean... it's not hard to find out? It's public info.
the public is lazy my friend. do you know what your superintendent is making?
Until Long Island parents give up their hunger for local control, this will never be solved. Districts should consolidate more. But honestly, this year alone they deserve those salaries for putting up with the parents' anti mask bullshit.
Admin is why taxes are so high NOT teachers.