While teachers in various states fight for collective bargaining rights and benefits, Syosset schools superintendent Carole Hankin is fulfilling every stereotype advanced by critics of public teachers. She is pulling in over $500,000 in annual pay and benefits in a compensation package that is $300,000 more than the head of the entire New York City school system.
Hankin’s compensation of $542,000 is to oversee a relatively small school district — covering Woodbury and Syosset communities of Long Island, with approximately 7,000 students in 10 schools.
The good news is that she can ask for a raise this year.
Even the governor and others are up in arms, noting as well that 37 employees in the district make more than $100,000 a year, including an administrative assistant. According to this site, Hankin’s deputy makes roughly $300,000 in base salary followed by a principal making roughly $170,000.
However, some residents have defended Hankin.
As with prior salary scandals (here and here and here), there remains real accountability for those who approved these salaries.
This is a very successful district and Hankin deserves a high salary for her performance. However, this is pretty excessive for a public employee given the disconnect with the salaries of teachers in the district. The worst thing is that this is going to be used by critics to support the claim that public teachers are overpaid and unaccountable — neither of which are true.
Source: NY Post
Where do I apply……
Proof that Education in America is a failure is that it putts out people who “think” and “reason” as badly as you do Nuutie. You ad the 27% of the country that can see past reality to a fantasy land where your deepest prejudices are true in spite of silly things like evidence. What you “know” as stated above has been proven false on many occasions by honest research.
“Millions of people believing the world is flat have not unrounded it an inch” – Assamov
Money has little to do with good education. Like real estate is based on location, location, location (as on an “island” for heavens sake) good education is based on curricula, curricula, curricula. And it doesn’t have to be expensive.
We spend about the same per capita on education as most of the “first world” countries we compete with in international education testing. Yet dollar for dollar we do much more poorly in international tests (unless you compare them by race).
Whites and Asians (who make up the bulk of the population of the community in question) test higher than blacks and Hispanics in general even if they have the same curriculum. They tend to do this everywhere. Since there are hardly any of these ethnic groups in this community their scores are apt to look good anyway because they have a higher overall IQ than a district with a varied racial mix. Naturally they are going to do “better” in school when “better” has to do with the processes of the mind and learning.
So this isn’t necessarily about some special foresight on the part of the people in this community.
If you take a superior curriculum from a distinguished private school and plop it down in the middle of an inner city school (as was done in Baltimore some years ago) minority kids can do much better. Johns Hopkins confirmed it. But it is white liberals who have prevented such programs from going forward with disadvantaged kids of all races.
It simply doesn’t cost a lot of money to squeeze the best out of all kids and to think or believe otherwise is to be uneducated or ignorant about the problem and the solution.
And it is dumb to suggest that poor parents do not want what even “middle class” parents want for their children (in education). In fact, it is often poor parents who demand and complain bitterly about the lack of the three “Rs” (readin’, ritin’, and rithmatic’) at school.
And it has been mostly white liberals ( Democrats and unions) who have denied it to the poor and disadvantaged. And it is mostly Democrats and unions who have insisted on inferior curricula and the academic distractions of social engineering.
The tragedy that has become American public education is proof that it should be die a hasty death, be buried with glee, and never be mourned.
Compulsory education is anathema to a people (allegedly) devoted to freedom and liberty. And if the best educated kids in America grow up to be adults who believe it a virtue to force other peoples children to attend school at gunpoint, then the best education in America is a complete failure.
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“And even if she did, somehow, $500,000 could only be justified if the districts she manages are not wanting for anything at all.”
Les,
Knowing the district I think it lacks for nothing. Wealthy people get better schools. That is one of the real problems of US education.
Les, you are wrong. One of my conservative buddies was fond of telling me that per student spending has increase 180% since the 1970s. Was fond until I googled an inflation calculator for him & showed him that during that same period inflation had gone up 560%.
In real dollars we spend much less now and we have added more burdens via ADA and several silly mandates about what to teach & how to teach it that are based on politics (both right and left) than about education.
Mike, I agree with you that we should value our educators, but I don’t think the bureaucrat in this situation really qualifies. And even if she did, somehow, $500,000 could only be justified if the districts she manages are not wanting for anything at all.
My high school and mddle school years were spent living in Jericho, which abuts this school district. Both districts represent very affluent communities, which became that way due to their excellent school systems. My parent’s home, which they bought for $21,000 in 1956, now is worth over a million. Back then $21,000 was an average price for a middle class home on Long Island. Both these communities were potato farms essentially, until housing was built.
That housing was for the middle class. The parents of those districts made certain that their school system was good, ti ensure their children’s future. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams and these communities began to attract affluent buyers and housing prices soared. The teachers in those districts are also well paid, far beyond the country’s average salaries.
To me it should be that way. Education is vital to the betterment of society, but all too often it is paid for on the cheap. When that is the case the education falters. When we live in a society where a CEO of no special skills can make many million$ a year, why do we devalue our educators? It is short sited societally and reflects the poor values that have been pushed on us by years of
Right Wing propaganda.
As a strong critic of the public school system, I don’t think this has as much to do with teachers as it has to do with the way education funds are spent. Since the 70’s per-pupil spending has done nothing but increase in real dollars, and this overpaid administrator represents one aspect of how it’s wasted.
In New Jersey, they lost one billion education dollars. Yes, they claim to have lost it.
This salary is an outrage, but it is not even in the same stratosphere when compared to Wall Street salaries and bonuses. If the voters in that school district actually believe the administrators are worth those bloated salaries, that is their right. I think the sunshine of the public eye might wake up some of the voters.
This is an example of selection bias at it’s best (i.e worst).
What Frank said.
“The worse thing is that this is going to be used by critics to support the claim that public teachers are overpaid and unaccountable — neither of which are true.”
Amen. The cherry pickers will pounce on this like starved rats. But, what is the job worth? How much should a MLB short-stop who hits .298 and fields .937 make per year? How much should the CEO who oversaw the gutting of the pension fund, wholesale lay-offs and a 50% share price increase get? How much should a teacher with a class of 37, in a room designed for 25, most of whom are not sure they will have dinner that night, several who live in homes where English is not spoken and, despite the teachers Herculean efforts are failing the standardized test get? Or the teacher in the wealthy district where the kids have all the advantages money can buy & mostly breeze through the test get paid.
That’s more than the President makes, isn’t it?
I was too late to comment on “Checkbook Justice”, so I’d like to leave a comment here. Isn’t LeVin just like Cheney (bribery)? Both got penalties more appropriate to a civil suit than a criminal charge