School superintendent salaries continue to soar in Texas, with the highest-paid top administrator’s salary once again topping half a million dollars.
Newly released Texas Education Agency data for the 2022-23 school year shows five superintendents with salaries above $400,000, and another 72 earning $300,000 or more.
During the 2021-22 school year, 60 superintendents scored salaries at or above $300,000.
Texas’ highest paid school superintendent, Cypress-Fairbanks ISD’s Mark Henry, pulls down a base salary of $521,000.
The administrators’ lucrative salaries are supplemented by benefits like insurance; pension contributions; and allowances for cars, phones, and housing. They often include hefty retention bonuses as well.
All are provided at taxpayers’ expense.
Superintendent salaries show no correlation to the number of students enrolled in a district or students’ academic performance.
James Quintero, a policy director at the free-market think tank Texas Public Policy Foundation, noted that the state’s third-highest paid superintendent—Ysleta ISD’s Xavier De La Torre—receives a salary of $442,000, while just 51 percent of the district’s 36,000 students can read at or above grade level.
“Superintendents are getting rich at taxpayer expense. It’s obscene, and it’s driving property tax bills through the roof,” Quintero told Texas Scorecard. “It’s well past time for the Texas Legislature to rein in these supersized superintendent salaries and bring commonsense back to public service.”
Locally elected school board trustees hire superintendents and set their salaries. In most Texas school districts, the next local school board elections are on May 6.
Superintendent salary data can be searched here.
School performance data can be searched here.
