By Bill Zettler
Former District 200 Superintendent Gary Catalani recently signed a contract with an Arizona school district worth $195,000/yr plus benefits. That’s about $20,000 less than his $214,000 retirement from Illinois. We calculated his total Illinois pension take at over $9 million (see here). And it is a whole lot less than his salary of $380,000 in 2006 in fact about twice as much for ½ as many students.
As you can see from the following table, AZ highest paid superintendent salaries are much lower than Illinois. Why is that do you suppose? Here’s the entire article from Arizona.
You can see that the Mesa Schools chief with 76,000 students makes less than an Art teacher made in Illinois last year. In Illinois only Chicago school district has more students than Mesa. As for Illinois superintendent salaries here’s a table of the highest paid in 2008:
Name |
School |
Salary |
Students |
Cost/Student |
Times AZ |
Codell, Neil C |
Niles Twp CHSD 219 |
411,511 |
4,800 |
86 |
21 |
Murray, Laura L |
Homewood Flossmoor CHSD 233 |
402,331 |
3,000 |
134 |
34 |
Gmitro, Henry A |
CCSD 93 |
348,113 |
4,500 |
77 |
19 |
Kelly, Dennis G |
Lyons Twp HSD 204 |
342,075 |
3,800 |
90 |
23 |
King, Eric A |
ESD 159 |
340,267 |
2,000 |
170 |
43 |
McKanna, Robert A |
Palatine CCSD 15 |
327,596 |
12,400 |
26 |
7 |
Hager, Maureen L |
North Shore SD 112 |
317,268 |
4,400 |
72 |
18 |
Gallagher, James J |
Evergreen Park CHSD 231 |
299,866 |
950 |
316 |
79 |
|
|
|
|
AVERAGE> |
30 |
|
ARIZONA AVERAGE PER STUDENT>>>> |
|
|
$4.00 |
|
So Illinois taxpayers pay superintendents 6 to 78 times more per student for their superintendents than AZ does. Why can’t Illinois School Boards find these less expensive people when they are recruiting new superintendents? By the way, the pension payout for those 8 Illinois superintendents will total about $60,000,000.
There were also 75 teachers in Illinois who made more than the 6th highest paid superintendent in AZ.
This is more evidence of the unholy alliance between Illinois politicians of both parties and the public school employee political organizations. Illinois taxpayers pay more for public education because Illinois politicians take more money from school employees.
Illinois politicians should take AZ as an example of how to hold down education costs by paying reasonable salaries for school employees. There is no reason Illinois taxpayers should pay 78 times more for school management than AZ. One place to start would be to consolidate Illinois 900 plus school districts into 300 thereby saving the need for 600 over paid superintendents.
Bill Zettler is a free-lance writer and consultant specializing in public sector compensation. He can be contacted at this email address. Click here to read more by Mr. Zettler.