The most popular articles in our local Bergen Record discuss the average salaries of teachers and cops in our area.
While most teachers in New Jersey earn between $40,000 and $60,000, 1.6 percent of the state's 116,000 public school teachers make over $100,000. That's 1,847 teachers and most of them are in Northern New Jersey. The median salary for high school teachers in our town is $80,111.
Other public employees are also doing very well.
Eighty-eight percent of the 563 Bergen County workers who earned
more than $100,000 in 2009 worked in law enforcement — as assistant
prosecutors, county investigators, county police officers or jail
guards. About 44 percent of Bergen County Sheriff's Office employees
took home more than $100,000 in salary and overtime in 2009.Daniel
Marro, a Bergen County corrections officer, made more than $190,000 in
2009 – about $78,000 of that came from overtime pay. Stephen Malone, a
county police sergeant, made $180,000, including about $76,000 in
overtime.
Public employee salaries is a favorite topic of local newspapers (see this one on cops in Rockland County, NY). The reporters who write these stories make around $30,000 or $40,000, so imagine them typing out these stories with white knuckles on the keyboard.
I'm going to another town meeting tonight about the budget crisis. This is guaranteed to be a hot topic tonight.
(Sorry for all the Jersey-centric blog posts lately. I suppose I could write about a juicy national sex scandal later.)
Apt. 11d 
These numbers just hit our boards, too, and the average salary for our teachers is being reported as 75K/year (in the city, not the state), with 95K/year including benefits.
I think that’s a reasonable salary to pay our teachers — not too much, but, also, I think, not too little. I also wouldn’t think it was too much if the mean was 100K instead, if it were for a full year (rather than a 10 mo salary).
I don’t like seeing these data reported as the “88% of the 563” because I think that’s making the salary too personal. I want to talk about the rules — not the person who made 190K, but the rules that allowed him to make 190. Then, we could talk about how whether we want the rules to be different.
And, I feel the same way about the folks at Goldman Sachs who took home 50 million, or whatever it is.
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I’m not proud of this, but I once had access to and read a list of teacher salaries for a place I worked (public ed). The highest paid teacher was also the one who said “Give me the most difficult children in the school to teach.” And she did an awesome job.
/anecdata
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“I’m not proud of this, but I once had access to and read a list of teacher salaries for a place I worked (public ed). ”
I always look at this data when it’s available (and many states require it to be available for public employees). Our state posts salaries for all state employees (and teachers), by name. I feel no guilt whatsoever about perusing these data bases, and think that everyone should.
http://www.seattlepi.com/data/databases/teacher-salaries.asp
for example.
I think tax payers have a right to know what people whose salaries are paid by taxes are making. I worry about abuse of the system for, say telemarketing and the like, but my solution to that would be to forbid its use for that purpose, rather than making it difficult for taxpayers to find.
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Oh, and I wouldn’t look at this data, probably, if it wasn’t publicly available (or if I broke down, I would feel guilty). But, I think it should be publicly available.
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I don;’t really agree about publicity about salaries — the public has the right to elect people to make and enforce rules about who gets paid what, and whether they make the salaries public is up to them. It is not usually difficult to figure out how much a teacher you know makes because they are paid according to a standardized schedule, and you can figure out most of the relevant details about someone you know.
My salary is public information. About 3 years ago my university decided to make it very difficult for outsiders to find out what our salaries are because there was good reason to believe that competitors were using the information to figure out whom to target with enticing outside offers. (In my case, the head of organization that wanted to use me as a consultant said that he had looked up my salary to figure out what he should pay me, but then ignored it because he thought my salary was absurdly low, and he didn’t want to insult me — my salary has increased rather dramatically since then).
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(In my case, the head of organization that wanted to use me as a consultant said that he had looked up my salary to figure out what he should pay me, but then ignored it because he thought my salary was absurdly low, and he didn’t want to insult me — my salary has increased rather dramatically since then.”
Another reason why I think the information should be public. I think it can legitimately expose underpayment (as well as overpayment). It’s a better way, frankly, than the “peer institution” studies that are common.
Washington state has an extensive public records law that clearly mandates that the salaries of state employees is a public record. For state employees, the state has actually created and published the database of the records. Since the teachers are district employees, I think this information is still being made available through republishers (i.e. newspapers, conservative think tanks, etc.).
I don’t think I’d mandate forcing private organizations to make their salary information public — though I might require them to make public the budgets of public funds given to them, which could include salaries.
As Harry reports — I’ve heard that publishing CEO salaries in annual reports had the perverse effect of raising compensation, because it made it easy for head hunters to develop “comps” in negotiating salary packages for CEO-types. That’s an unintended effect as far as I’m concerned (though not for the CEOs, I’d imagine). But, I still prefer the transparency.
Now, I think I’ve said previously that Americans — maybe the Brits, too? are surprisingly prudish about money, at least to me.
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PS: many state university systems make failry extensive information public. Basically almost everything is state-FOIA-ble, so it’s mostly a question of whether someone reasonably sophisticated has chosen to make the information available. State agencies (including universities) no longer have the power to hide the information if some cares to make it public.
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Now, I think I’ve said previously that Americans — maybe the Brits, too? are surprisingly prudish about money, at least to me.
Well, during a recession, it certainly is not a good idea to admit to having any money if you can possibly avoid it.
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“NJ Teacher who complained of low pay to Gov. Chris Christie makes >$100,000 with benefits”
http://theblogprof.blogspot.com/2010/05/nj-teacher-who-complained-to-gov-chris.html
I half-believe that there must be more to the story, because who would be so stupid as to lie in such a public forum about a salary that is published online?
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Siobhan,
I expect she’s honest, but
1. thinking in terms of take-home, not gross salary
2. not good at math
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pfft teachers are way over paid. they do the same thing over and over year after year, with the exception of history/current events. Also our Correction Officers are over paid to nothing more than baby sit and play games taking turns calling in sick to get paid over time.
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