San Jose Unified admins’ salaries are higher than Newsom’s

Breaking down the West Contra Costa School District’s controversial bond measure of 2020, the California Globe’s Edward Ring highlights how CA’n school admins are egregiously overpaid. If the $281k and $235k salaries SJUSD’s Albarran/Mahon currently earn were delegated to the classroom, what a difference that could make. Even our state governor sits at $224k/yr. — are superintendents more important?

Are WCCUSD Teachers Overpaid or Underpaid?

Viewing data from Transparent California, you decide. Administrators are certainly not underpaid, with the first 100 records – nearly all of them administrators, all reporting individuals who are earning total compensation of $150,000 per year or more. As for pensions, the average reported by Transparent California for WCCUSD retirees with 30 years of service is over $67,000 per year, not including supplemental insurance benefits.

You don’t think that’s a lot? If every Californian over the age of 60 collected a pension that big, it would cost $563 billion per year. And the maximum Social Security benefit, which requires a lifetime of high income and a retirement deferred till age 70, is only $45,480 per year. The top pensioner from WCCUSD is earning a pension of over $170,000 per year; 45 WCCUSD retirees earned a pension in 2018 that was over $100,000.

But few would suggest that good teachers, anywhere, are overpaid. So how well are WCCUSD teachers doing their jobs?

According to Ed Data, in 2017-18, the most recent year reporting, 65.6 percent of WCCUSD students did not meet basic state standards in English literacy, and 76.7 percent of WCCUSD students did not meet basic state standards in Mathematics numeracy.

It is in the face of this dismal performance that Contra Costa’s board of supervisors, instead of cutting non classroom personnel, or having an honest conversation with the employees about sharing the cost of benefits, are closing a charter school that had strong community support from the parents, students and alumni. But apparently that’s not the right community.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe. Read the whole thing here.

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