Put cap on school chiefs' pay

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's proposal to create a salary cap for school superintendents is bringing to a boil an issue that's been simmering for years. Superintendent pay and benefits, which for some district leaders approaches $500,000 per year, enrages taxpayers, and their anger is understandable. Many superintendents are paid too much, which inspires overcompensation of the administrators and teachers who work for them. Their benefits are sometimes too generous. Their contracts are often opaque and run for too many years. The results their expertise is supposed to guarantee go unmeasured.

Limiting superintendent pay to $125,000 per year in the smallest districts and $175,000 in the largest ones, would save about $15 million per year statewide. Given the budget challenges, this is a nearly meaningless amount - yet the move has meaning. It would show we are ready to change a system we can't afford, and we are starting at the top.

The $175,000 figure might not be exactly the right number, and it might not be appropriate to make the cap identical statewide, since the cost of living varies widely, but the idea is a start. The challenge now is to shepherd through the legislature a law strong enough and sensible enough to make a difference.

Superintendent compensation is frequently negotiated in a way that's unfair to taxpayers, because superintendents exert influence on the boards which approve the packages, and can often reward the lawyers who negotiate their deals with contracts to represent the district in negotiations with teachers. The result is expensive, complex, benefit-laden agreements and a competitive syndrome in which each superintendent uses the ever-increasing pay of neighboring school chiefs to leverage his or her own contract.

Superintendents and supporters argue that compensation should be decided locally, but not all funding is local. Thanks to state aid to schools, which goes to every district out of taxes collected statewide, we all pay for each others' superintendents and we all have a stake in what they earn.

A cap on superintendent compensation should, in the long run, save far more money by lowering pay and benefits for the educators who report to them. The Half Hollow Hills school district, for instance, has nine employees with total annual packages worth more than $200,000, 45 employees over $150,000 and 299 employees over $100,000.

The final law should limit benefits and contract length, as well as pay. It might even be reasonable to let districts opt out of the law if they are willing to forgo state aid in return for that freedom. Much remains to be determined.

But this is an important start to a crucial conversation. The system by which we pay superintendents and other educators is broken, and Cuomo's proposal and the legislative debate that must follow will kick off the much-needed process of finding the fixes.