(Texas Scorecard) – Conservative fiscal policy advocates are raising questions about the salaries of the highest-paid school administrators in Texas.
According to a recent analysis of the 2023-2024 school year, salaries for the highest-paid school principals in the Houston area ranged from $153,000 to more than $200,000.
An interim principal in Spring Branch Independent School District makes the most at $201,086. Another four principals in Spring Branch ISD were among the highest paid, with the average principal’s yearly salary being $121,488.
When it comes to superintendent salaries, Houston ISD’s Mike Miles is the district’s highest-paid employee, earning $380,000 in his first year.
In Fort Worth ISD, now-former Superintendent Angelica Ramsey, who was accused by teachers of creating a “toxic environment,” will be paid nearly $1 million in total until she officially resigns as an employee on August 30, 2025.
“Why should any local employee make more than the Texas governor, who oversees a state of 30 million residents?” asked James Quintero in an article for the Texas Public Policy Foundation. The governor’s salary is $153,750.
Quintero wrote that the last time there was an effort to “reform and restrain superintendent compensation” was in 2019. Proposed changes brought forward included enacting a limitation on superintendent salaries, curtailing superintendent severance payments, and requiring compensation transparency.
Funding for government schools should go to the classroom and not to “bloated administrations,” Andrew McVeigh, president of Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, told Texas Scorecard.
“While many proponents of government schools, many of whom are government school employees, are deriding that public education is being ‘defunded,’ we are witnessing explosive growth when it comes to the bloat at the administrative level,” said McVeigh.
“There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that public schools in Houston and elsewhere are unable to control compensation for public education elites on their own,” Quintero wrote. “Instead, commonsense legislation is needed to control costs and protect taxpayers from an insatiable system.”
