Earlier this month, Manhattan Assemblywoman Deborah Glick sponsored a bill to cap the pay of charter-school executives. Ideally, says Glick, their salaries shouldn’t be more than that of the New York City schools chancellor.
Glick’s primary target is Success Academy Schools CEO Eva Moskowitz — whose remarkable, well, success in educating black and Hispanic kids rubs the education monopoly the wrong way.
Glick believes Moskowitz’s high six-figure salary sends an unseemly message about public education, never mind that Moskowitz is paid by private backers and not the taxpayers.
If Glick is really looking for an unseemly message about public school pay, maybe she should take a look at what the city and state are coughing up for teacher pensions.
New data from the Empire Center for the Public Policy shows the number of teachers receiving six-figure pensions in New York nearly tripled between 2009 and 2014.
Last year, more than 4,800 school retirees were eligible to receive pensions of more than $100,000, up from 1,600 in 2009. That, by the way, includes schools chief Carmen Fariña, who collects a $208,000 pension in addition to her salary as chancellor.
Let’s put this in perspective: Six-figure pension payouts are rising in a state where fewer than a third of students pass their state tests.
So how about it, Assemblywoman Glick? If it’s unseemly to pay charter-school leaders six-figure salaries for the successes of their schools, isn’t it far worse for New Yorkers to be paying out six-figure pensions for the retirees of a system that’s been failing its students?