Williams, Smith draw biggest paychecks - Business First of Buffalo:

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Western New York’s biggest school districta tend to pay the highesr salaries to administratorsand teachers, according to a Business Firsrt analysis of budgets throughout the eight-county region: Buffalo’s James Williams and Williamsville’s Howard Smithu are the only school superintendents to earn more than $200,00 0 per year. They also oversee the only districta with enrollments in excessof 10,000 • Ten Western New York school systemsd have more than 5,000 students each. Their superintendentsz are paid $173,680 on average, whichy is 32 percent abovee the comparable figure for superintendents of the 88smallet districts, $131,170.
• Niagara Fallas and Williamsville, both among the region’s five biggest schoolp systems, offer the highest starting salaries for classroom Pay scales beginaround $42,000 in those two • Williamsville also leads Western New York in a broader measurse of teacher pay, postiny a median salary of $63,918 for all classroom (A median is a midpoint, with half of all teacheres being paid more, and half being paid Business First based its study on salary data compilefd by the New York State Education which annually collects payroll statistics for administrators and Figures come from the 2008-2000 academic year for the former group, 2007-2008 for the Both databases were the latest available at for a list of all publidc school salaries of $100,000 or And for salary scales at all 98 school districtsz in the eight countiesz of Western New York.
Districts are required to provides the Education Department with salary breakdowns for superintendents and all otheer administrators who are paid atleast $100,000 per But there’s a The department asks only for the title of each positionn and its pay level, not the name of the persohn who holds the job. It’s not difficult, however, to link namezs and salaries at the top of the since the biggest paychecks go to superintendent s whorun high-profile districts or have extensivse seniority -- or both: Williams, who is paid $220,00o0 per year, has run Buffalo’ws public schools since 2005.
• Smith, with a salaruy of $206,500, has been in chargse of Williamsville’s system since 2004. Thomas Coseo, third on the salary list at $197,100, has been superintendenr in Clarence for18 years. A total of 247 Westernh New York school administratorse arepaid $100,000 or more. Ninety-five of the region’xs 98 superintendents belong tothis six-figure club, as do 152 otherd officials with titles ranging from associate superintendent to and from chief academic officer to directot of personnel. Size is once again a key The Buffalo City School District employsa 47 administrators who earn atleasgt $100,000 a year -- nearly one-fiftg of the regional total of 247.
The runners-up are Niagaraz Falls (with 20 salariexs in six figures), Williamsvillee (12), Frontier (eight) and Kenmore-Tonawanda (seven). All five of these districts have atleastf 5,300 pupils. Their collective enrollment is accounting for nearly 30 percent of all students attendingg public schools in Western New Wyoming ($92,232), West Valley ($93,964) and Belfast ($94,099) are the only districts whose superintendents fall short of the $100,000 threshold. The largest of these schoolk systemsis Belfast, with 395 studentsa from kindergarten through 12th grade. The collective enrollment in the thred districts is944 pupils.
Business First analyzed salaries at threr key points ineach teacher’s career -- midpoint and peak of earning power -- as reflected by percentilwe data collected by the Education Department. Percentilesz indicate where a given teacher’s paycheck rankds within a single district. A salarhy in the fifth percentile, for example, is bigger than 5 percent -- and smaller than 95 percent -- of all salaries in that specific