Public school teachers in New York state are increasingly pulling in six-figure taxpayer-funded salaries with generous benefits packages, with some educators in one Long Island school district making an average of $161,000 per year, according to a new report.
The 534 educators who worked in the Central Islip Public Schools District earned a collective total of more than $64 million, around $121,261 a teacher, not including benefits, for the 2015-2016 school year, according to a report from the Education Action Group.
These teachers also made an additional $12,897,342 in benefits, with each teacher making an average of $24,152 in benefits.
The compensation package does not end there for Central Islip’s teachers–the school district contributed a total of $8,566,330 to teachers’ retirement funds, spending an average of $16,041 per teacher.
Despite the large salaries teachers make in the district, Central Islip Public Schools maintain a mediocre academic reputation. According to the school ranking website Niche.com, the Central Islip Public School District has a C- rating in academics.
Central Islip is not the only place in New York state where educators earn six-figure salaries on average.
According to a database of New York state public school teachers’ salaries from the Democrat & Chronicle, 49 teachers in Nassau County made more than $240,000 in gross pay for the 2015-2016 school year. Ten educators in the same county reported salaries of more than $300,000.
In Erie County in upstate New York, 50 teachers reported salaries of $143,000 or more for the 2015-2016 school year, according to the database.
In Suffolk County, 50 teachers reported salaries of at least $225,000 a year. The highest-paid K-12 public-school employee in the county and in the state for the 2015-2016 school year was Elwood Superintendent Peter Scordo, who earned $385,861, database records show.
Even though teachers in the state are pulling in hefty salaries, New York’s state education system is ranked 23rd in the country for K-12 education, according to U.S. News and World Report.
Other states that spend less on its teachers had higher rankings on the list, including the No. 1-ranked state on the list–New Hampshire. In the Manchester School District, for example, only 10 employees in the district made more than $100,000 per year for the 2014-2015 school year, the New Hampshire Union Leader reported.