Salaries for employees in the Philadelphia school district are staggering.
The district has 10 superintendents who make a combined $1.64 million annually. Superintendent William Hite tops the list at $270,000, and his deputy makes $210,000. Eight assistant superintendents each make $145,000.
For the sake of comparison, Gov. Tom Corbett makes $175,000 annually.
And while the district’s budget director makes $128,724, Philadelphia is operating so deeply and persistently in a deficit that students are underserved by actual school personnel.
Department heads with titles such as “chief talent officer” and “chief of strategic partnerships” pull in six-figure salaries from the school district, but so do 13 deputy department chiefs.
In total, 395 employees on the district payrolls make more than $100,000, although not a single one is a teacher or a staff member who spends the majority of his or her time in the classroom.
The list, however, includes 218 principals and 60 assistant principals. The average base salary for a principal is $137,919.
But those numbers soon may change. The principals’ union, the Commonwealth of School Administrators, struck a tentative deal this month with the district that features a 15 percent pay cut. Even with that, most senior administrators would still earn six-figure salaries.