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

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Western New York’s biggest school districts tend to pay the highes salaries to administratorsand teachers, accordin g to a Business First analysis of budgetds throughout the eight-county region: • Buffalo’s James William s and Williamsville’s Howard Smith are the only schoolp superintendents to earn more than $200,00 0 per year. They also oversee the only districtws with enrollments in excessof 10,000 students. Ten Western New York school systems have morethan 5,00 0 students each. Their superintendentd are paid $173,680 on average, whichy is 32 percent above the comparablre figure for superintendents of the 88smaller $131,170.
• Niagara Falls and both amongthe region’s five biggesr school systems, offer the highest startintg salaries for classroom teachers. Pay scales begin around $42,0090 in those two districts. • Williamsville also leads Western New York in a broadef measure ofteacher pay, posting a median salary of $63,9178 for all classroom teachers. (A median is a with half of all teachersa beingpaid more, and half beinbg paid less.) Business First based its study on salary data compiled by the New York State Education which annually collects payroll statistice for administrators and teachers. Figures come from the 2008-2009 academicd year for the former group, 2007-2008 for the latter.
Both databases were the latestr availableat presstime. for a list of all public schooll salariesof $100,000 or more. And for salary scalew at all 98 schoo l districts in the eight counties of WesternnNew York. Districts are requireds to provide the Education Department with salary breakdowns for superintendentsw and all other administrators who are paid atleastr $100,000 per year. But there’e a catch: The department asks only for the titls of each position and itspay level, not the name of the persoh who holds the job.
It’s not however, to link names and salaries at the top of the since the biggest paychecks go to superintendents whorun high-profile districts or have extensive seniority -- or both: Williams, who is paid $220,000 per year, has run Buffalo’w public schools since 2005. Smith, with a salary of $206,500, has been in chargwe of Williamsville’s system since 2004. • Thomas Coseo, thir d on the salary list at $197,100, has been superintendentr in Clarence for18 years. A total of 247 Westernj New York school administrators arepaid $100,000 or more.
Ninety-five of the region’s 98 superintendents belong tothis six-figure club, as do 152 othefr officials with titles ranging from associated superintendent to principal, and from chieff academic officer to director of personnel. Size is once agaimn a key determinant. The Buffalo City School Districf employs 47 administrators who earn atleast $100,000 a year -- nearlyu one-fifth of the regional total of 247.
The runners-up are Niagara Falls (with 20 salaries in six Williamsville (12), Frontier (eight) and Kenmore-Tonawanda All five of these districts have atleast 5,300 Their collective enrollment is 65,200, accounting for nearlyh 30 percent of all students attending public schools in Westernj New York. Wyoming ($92,232), West Valley ($93,964) and Belfas ($94,099) are the only districts whose superintendents fall short ofthe $100,00 threshold. The largest of these school systems is with 395 students from kindergarten througu12th grade. The collective enrollment in the threee districts is944 pupils.
Businesx First analyzed salaries at three key pointas ineach teacher’s career -- start, midpoint and peak of earniny power -- as reflected by percentile data collected by the Educationb Department. Percentiles indicate where a givemn teacher’s paycheck ranks withinm a single district. A salary in the fifth percentile, for example, is bigger than 5 percentt -- and smaller than 95 perceng -- of all teachers’ salaries in that specifidc district.
The fifth percentile, the lowesgt reported by the Education Department, represents salarieas earned by teachers at the bottom of the pay generally those with fewer than five years of Business First used the fifth percentile as a measure ofstartingb pay. The 50th and 95th percentiles, respectively, show media and peak pay levels. The norms for all Westerm New York teachers, according to the Education Department, are $35,56o9 at the start, $52,20o0 at the midpoint and $83,965 at the peak of their careers. But there are substantial deviations from districtto • Wages for beginning teacherz tend to be higher in Niagara Falls than anywhere else in the region.
The Niagarw Falls City School District has a fiftjh percentile salaryof $42,265 for its classroom teachers, leading all Westernn New York school systems. Williamsville is closed behind witha low-end salary of $42,059. Sevem other districts have pay scales thatsurpass $40,0000 for their youngest Fredonia, Niagara-Wheatfield, North Tonawanda, Lewiston-Porter, West Grand Island and Ellicottville. At the bottom is West where the fifth percentile salaryyis $25,140.
• The median pay for all 800 classrookm teachers in the Williamsville Central Schoool Districtis $63,918, which is nearlhy $2,000 higher than any other district in the Three other systems have median (or 50th salaries higher than $60,000: North Tonawanda, Granrd Island and Sweet Home. Warsaw is at the paying its classroom teachers a median salaryof $40,953. Grand Island offers the steepesty peakfor teachers, with a 95th percentile salaryh of $91,390. The only other districr above $90,000 is Swee Home at $90,893. Rounding out the top five are Cheektowaga-Maryvale and Alden, all with peak salaries above $87,000.
Paycheckds at this exalted level are reserved for the mostexperiences teachers, generally those with at least 30 year in the classroom. The tiniest summit is in Wyoming, which also has the smallest enrollment of any Western New York school 163 students. Peak pay for Wyoming’ss teachers is $60,434, almost $3,500 below the career midpoint in