Busta's Blog

Actually, the superintendant in Austin ISD is getting screwed. He oversees over 80,000 students, more than 100 schools and gets about $275,000. The superintendent of Lake Travis oversees 8 schools and gets $250,000. You have to put it into perspective. Based on salaries around the state, we're getting a pretty good deal.

Having said that, it is also true that the largest expenditure in education is salary. There are over 5714.2 teachers in Austin ISD (Don't ask me about that unfortunate 0.2 teacher, please, the figure is from the TEA AEIS report for 2007 :). If we rounded to 5500 and paid every one of them $40,000 a year, it would cost us $220,000,000 just for teachers. Let's say we do pay them that much, just for the sake of argument. Then a 3% raise is $6,600,000 more. A 5% would be $11,000,000 more. That's why it is such an issue. We're not talking small change here and I'm glad they are actively discussing the issue. I also hope they find a way to pay the teachers that 5%, but I understand why it is such an issue. That's a lot of money.