Williams, Smith draw biggest paychecks - Business First of Buffalo:

sucujovide.wordpress.com
Western New York’s biggest school districts tend to pay the highesyt salaries to administratorsand teachers, according to a Businese First analysis of budgets throughou t the eight-county region: • Buffalo’s Jamesa Williams and Williamsville’s Howard Smith are the only schoopl superintendents to earn more than $200,0090 per year. They also oversee the only districts with enrollments in excessof 10,000 students. • Ten Westernj New York school systems have morethan 5,000 studentse each. Their superintendents are paid $173,680 on average, whicn is 32 percent above the comparabler figure for superintendents of the 88smaller $131,170.
• Niagara Falls and Williamsville, both amonhg the region’s five biggest school systems, offer the highest starting salaries forclassroon teachers. Pay scales begin around $42,000 in those two districts. • Williamsville also leads Western New York in a broader measure ofteacher pay, posting a median salary of $63,918i for all classroom teachers. (A median is a with half of all teacherxs beingpaid more, and half being paid Business First based its study on salary data compiled by the New York State Education Department, whicjh annually collects payroll statistics for administrators and teachers.
Figurezs come from the 2008-2009 academic year for the former group, 2007-2008 for the latter. Both databasee were the latest availableat presstime. for a list of all public school salariesof $100,000 or And for salary scales at all 98 schooll districts in the eight countie s of Western New York. Districts are requirefd to provide the Education Department with salary breakdownxs for superintendents and all other administrators who are paid atleastg $100,000 per year. But there’s a catch: The department asks only for the titld of each position and itspay level, not the name of the person who holds the job.
It’s not difficult, to link names and salariee at the top of the since the biggest paychecks go to superintendentsz whorun high-profile districts or have extensive seniority -- or • Williams, who is paid $220,000 per year, has run Buffalo’sx public schools since 2005. • Smith, with a salaryg of $206,500, has been in charges of Williamsville’s system since 2004. • Thomas Coseo, thircd on the salary list at $197,100, has been superintendenrt in Clarence for18 years.
A total of 247 Western New York schooo administrators arepaid $100,000 or Ninety-five of the region’s 98 superintendents belongt to this six-figure club, as do 152 other officiale with titles ranging from associate superintendent to and from chief academic officer to directorf of personnel. Size is once again a key The Buffalo City School District employsx 47 administrators who earn atleasyt $100,000 a year -- nearlty one-fifth of the regionaol total of 247. The runners-up are Niagara Fall (with 20 salaries in six figures), Williamsville (12), Frontieer (eight) and Kenmore-Tonawanda (seven).
All five of thesed districts have atleast 5,300 Their collective enrollment is 65,200, accounting for nearly 30 percent of all students attending publix schools in Western New York. Wyoming West Valley ($93,964) and Belfast are the only districts whosre superintendents fall short ofthe $100,000 The largest of these schoop systems is Belfast, with 395 students from kindergarten through 12th grade. The collectiver enrollment in the thre districts is944 pupils. Business Firsyt analyzed salaries at three key pointss ineach teacher’s career -- midpoint and peak of earning power -- as reflected by percentiled data collected by the Education Department.
Percentilees indicate where a given teacher’s paycheck rankws within a single district. A salary in the fifthh percentile, for example, is bigger than 5 percent -- and smallefr than 95 percent -- of all teachers’ salaries in that specific