Below is a chart showing the average salaries for public school teachers in all of the Erie and Niagara county school districts.

The information, provided by the Empire Center for Public Policy and based on state data, accompanies a media release indicating that from 2008-09  to 2012-13, the statewide median teacher salary rose by 10 percent — and the median for downstate suburban districts increased almost twice as much.

In Erie County, the average public school teacher’s salary for 2012-13 was $62,510. In Niagara County, the average was $64,520.

In Buffalo, where a new teacher contract hasn’t been adopted in a decade, teacher salaries have lagged behind other other districts in the region, though the lower wages for city teachers are offset somewhat by the fact that many teachers receive fully covered health benefits. Blank spots in the chart indicate where state data is missing.

Access the data on the Buffalo News website

© 2014, Buffalo News

You may also like

Pandemic, recession don’t bring down school budgets

Stephen T. Watson This year's school elections were delayed and then shifted entirely to voting by mail thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, which also shut down schools here and across the country. District officials worried this new method of Read More

The good, the bad and the ugly in Cuomo’s budget

“We are at the early stages of what shapes up as the biggest state and city fiscal crisis since the Great Depression,” said E.J. McMahon of the Empire Center. “Borrowing and short-term cuts aside, the budget doesn’t chart any clear path out of it.” Read More

Medicaid cuts make the state budget, with some tweaks

Bill Hammond, director of health policy at the conservative-leaning think tank the Empire Center, suggested this is because the proposed cuts are meant to slow the otherwise rapid growth in Medicaid spending, which means an increase is still possible.  Read More

Editorial: Cuomo’s problematic Medicaid maneuvers

“It’s everything that’s wrong with Albany in one ugly deal,” Bill Hammond, a health policy expert at the fiscally conservative Empire Center, told The Times. Read More

Gov. Cuomo’s Lawsuit on Pres. Trump’s Tax Cuts Dismissed

But according to the Empire Center, a non-profit group based in Albany, the overall impact of the Trump tax cuts actually benefited most state residents. Read More

It’s never simple arithmetic with schools

Earlier this week, the Empire Center did its own report on the plummeting numbers when it comes to students. Overall, the 2019-20 enrollment is at its lowest levels in New York state in the last 30 years. Read More

EDITORIAL: State schools continue spending more for less

As reported by the Empire Center last week, “The number of students enrolled in New York state public schools is the lowest recorded in 30 years.” Since 2000, enrollment in public schools has declined by more than 10 percent statewide with most of it upstate as enrollment in New York City schools has increased 1.3 percent in the last 10 years. Students are not leaving to go to private or parochial schools either because they, too, are showing declines, down about 8 percent in the last decade. Read More

$1 billion semiconductor plant: ‘Flashy mega-project’ or ‘transformational investment’ for New York?

"The state is continuing its strategy of pursuing flashy mega-projects instead of making New York more attractive for all businesses. We're now in the second decade of this approach, and it's still failing to deliver the promised results," Girardin said. "This is the sort of economic development strategy that politicians turn to when they don't want to take on the tougher questions." Read More