The Road to Easy Street: Become a school administrator
by admin on Sep.04, 2010, under Home insurance
For long-term employment security, it may be time to rethink the strategy of encouraging your child to become a left-handed relief specialist. Being a school administrator may be the way to go. To wit:
• Jeff Spiegel, the superintendent of the Ferguson-Florissant School District, who had been scheduled to retire last spring, was persuaded to postpone his retirement for a year, when he will be 56 years old. In return, he and his wife will be allowed to participate in the district’s health insurance plan for the rest of his life.
• Across the Mississippi River, the new president of Lewis and Clark Community College in Godfrey is Dale Chapman, who replaces Dale Chapman, who retired last spring. By retiring for two and a half months, Mr. Chapman was able to cash out $1.8 million in vested benefits in the State Universities Retirement System. Now he’s back on the job, earning the same $259,700 annual salary he was making when he left.
• In a study published July 30 by the Show-Me Institute, the conservative St. Louis-based think tank founded by retired financier Rex Sinquefield, research specialist Audrey Spalding reported that the average salary for school superintendents in Missouri in 2010 was $106,366. Non-salary benefits like health care, insurance, annuities and car allowances can add another 50 percent to the pay package.
The statewide data in Ms. Spalding’s study somewhat are skewed by the fact that 70 percent of Missouri’s 521 school districts have enrollments of fewer than 1,000 students. In general, the bigger the district, the more complicated the superintendent’s job is and the more he or she is paid.
Ms. Spalding told the Post-Dispatch’s Jessica Bock that Mr. Spiegel, the Ferguson-Florissant superintendent who is getting the lifetime health insurance deal, is one of the best compensated superintendents in the state.
The Ferguson-Florissant district has about 12,800 students, 825 teachers in 25 schools and an annual budget of $120 million. For running it, Mr. Spiegel earns $211,653 a year, plus an annuity of $17,740 and a $781 a month car allowance.
The school board says he is worth it because he’s helped keep the district fully accredited and its finances stable without laying off employees. This seems like a fairly low bar.
Ms. Spalding says school boards often pay big money to superintendents “so that they can be seen as having hired ‘the best,’ thereby refuting claims that they aren’t doing everything they can to improve the school district.”
The board estimates the lifetime health insurance package deal will cost about $218,398, but the actual cost is unknown. Whatever the final cost is, Mr. Spiegel will have earned it by postponing his retirement for a single year.
It’s a pretty good deal, but not as good as Mr. Chapman’s. Lewis and Clark Community College is roughly the same size as the Ferguson-Florissant school district - about 13,000 students are enrolled for credit.
When Mr. Chapman took over as president 18 years ago, the college had only 3,000 students. He’s built buildings and programs as well as enrollment, so it’s easy to see why the fightin’ Trail Blazers’ board of trustees would encourage a little legal double-dipping.
In 22 years at Lewis and Clark, the last 18 as president, Mr. Chapman accrued $1.8 million in retirement benefits. Participants in the State Universities Retirement System contribute 8 percent of their gross earnings and the state contributes another 7.1 percent.
Unfortunately, Mr. Chapman ran into a few financial problems along the way, mostly related to his decision in 2003 to build a $2.5 million waterfront retirement home in Massachusetts’ tony North Shore. By cashing out his retirement, he was able to settle his financial problems, although by going back to work he’s postponed the day when he can live in his fancy new house.
On the other hand, he is making $259,700 a year. And his wife, Linda Chapman, the college’s vice president for academic affairs, is dragging down another $182,000. So they ought to be OK.
The state of Illinois has very generous public employee pension plans, one of the reasons it has a $13 billion budget deficit. It has been borrowing about $4 billion a year just to meet its payments on $61 billion in outstanding pension obligations.
Extreme examples, such as Mr. Chapman and Alon Winnie, the retired University of Illinois doctor who gets a $460,000-a-year pension, obscure the fact that the average pension for a retired public employee in Illinois is $22,593. Only those who earn a lot of money during their working years - like school administrators, doctors and legislators do - amass a lot of loot.
Missouri has begun to address its public employee pensions. Starting next year, people who join the worst-paid state work force in the nation won’t get defined benefit plans, like pensions, but defined contribution plans, like 401(k)s. Illinois is under increasing pressure to do the same thing, but the Democratic-controlled legislature is loath to antagonize public employees and teacher unions.
For higher-paid employees, the question is not so much what they’re worth in retirement, but whether they were worth what they were paid during their working years. If a school superintendent is paid $200,000 a year plus annuity plus car, then his schools better be pretty good, or at least getting better.
Sometimes that’s the case. Other times, the superintendent has friends on the school board or friends in the teachers unions, who tend to control the school board elections, which are held in April. Junior college trustee elections are held in April, too.
Most folks don’t vote in April elections. People in power count on that.
Source:
