Prince Charlie says that $242,000 a year isn't enough. So the Jersey City School Board is giving him a raise:
Jersey City Superintendent of Schools Charles T. Epps Jr. is expected to ink a new three-year deal this week that will pay him $252,000 a year starting July 1, bump him up to $260,000 next year, and pay $275,000 the third year, according to persons familiar with the negotiations.
It's unbelievable. The average pay for a school superintendent is only $74,733. Earning $91,949 would put the Prince of Underachievement in the 75th percentile. We should be getting at least two people for this salary and probably three or four.
But he deserves it. Uh-huh. Me, too. I guess it all depends on how one defines "deserving".
The district has received national recognition for closing the achievement gap at the elementary school level, but test scores at the high school level have remained stubbornly low.
Roughly half the district's high school graduates last year - 667 out of 1,479 - had to go through an alternative process to graduate as opposed to passing the normal high school proficiency test.
Please, Prince Charlie, we can't afford any more success like this.
The Journal points out that this is hardly an isolated problem (superintendent salaries, not Prince Charlie - that's a pain that is all Jersey City's).
But compared to other superintendents, Epps's deal represents the going rate. For example, the superintendent of Newark - Marion A. Bolden - makes $270,000 a year.
And West New York's schools chief Robert Van Zanten is paid $231,000 a year to run a 7,000-student district that is less than a quarter of the size of the Jersey City school district, which has 30,000 students. Union City's schools boss Stanley Sanger is paid $202,000 a year in a district with 11,000 students. North Bergen Superintendent Robert Dandorph earns $198,000 a year for running a 8,000-student system.
You want to know why your property taxes are so outrageous? Take a look. These guys are getting paid somewhere between $18 and $30 per child in their school districts. The problem is, especially in Prince Charlie's case, the schools are a piece of crap. It's one thing to pay a quarter-of-a-million bucks a year for a Cadillac school - it's quite another when you're getting a Yugo.
