The superintendent of the Schenectady City School District pulls in a higher salary annually than Gov. Andrew Cuomo, earning a cool $184,824 to Cuomo’s $179,000.

That’s just Superintendent Larry Spring’s base salary, up $3,624 from the year prior. Spring also receives full tuition reimbursement for job-related college courses (so long as he earns an A) and a $3,000 annual stipend for local travel.

Schenectady is facing a $10 million budget shortfall. In a report released last week by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, the district was named the 11th most fiscally stressed district in the state.

“We’re going to have staff layoffs, we’re going to have program cuts, absolutely,” Spring told theTimes Union earlier this month while discussing the district’s 2014-15 budget.

Spring’s earnings bump was among the revelations in a pile of new school district labor contracts unleashed earlier this month by the Empire Center, a fiscally conservative watchdog group that promotes government transparency.

Documents also showed that Albany Superintendent Marguerite Vanden Wyngaard will earn a base salary of $193,800 in the 2013-2014, about $24,000 more than former district headRaymond Colucciello did in 2011-2012.

Newbie Saratoga Springs Superintendent Michael Piccirillo will rake in $163,200 in the 2013-14 school year, in addition to a one-time bonus of $3,000 and $400-a-month in car allowance, with additional reimbursement for out-of-district mileage on top of that. All this is according to his new five-year contract approved in June, and typed up in the font Comic Sans.

In the 3,500-student Queensbury Union Free School District, schools chief Douglas Huntleyearns $174,705, subject to renegotiation each new school year, plus $300-per-month for use of his personal car.

Those numbers, though, are not among the highest in the state.

The Empire Center crunched the numbers for new superintendent contracts ratified after July 1, 2013. In the Capital Region, the average salary was a modest $139,571. On Long Island, it was $208,422, followed by $207,540 in the Mid-Hudson region and $154,506 in the Finger Lakes. In some of the state’s districts, salaries have topped $400,000.

Across the state, all but three new superintendents’ contracts included base salaries of more than $100,000. An analysis by Rochester newspaper the Democrat and Chronicle last fall found that in spite of retirements and layoffs, the number of teachers and administrators earning more than $100,000 annually has climbed 40 percent over the past five years.

Superintendent salaries are a well-worn debate. In 2011, Cuomo called for a salary cap for superintendents of school districts, noting that at that time 33 percent of school district superintendents earned more than $175,000 and questioning whether schools spent too much on their own bureaucracy.

That cap would be based on student enrollment, maxing out at $175,000 for districts with more than 6,500 students, but the proposal quickly fizzled. (There is, however, already a salary cap of $166,762 in place for BOCES district superintendents.)

In 2013-2014, the average superintendent salary in New York was $166,550, according to State Education Department data. Salaries, of course, tend to vary based on factors such as cost of living in a district, district size and the challenges facing a particular district.

Robert Lowry, deputy director of the New York State Council of School Superintendents, said that competitive salaries are necessary to lure good candidates to the job, especially in more taxing districts.

And “the average salary has been almost flat for four years,” he noted. A salary of about $185,000 for a district like Schenectady — complicated to run and with a large student population of about 10,000 — is “not out of line.”

Though staff is a major portion of any district’s annual budget — about three quarters of school spending by commodity according to a recent NYSCSS survey — superintendent salaries are typically a small part. Schenectady’s 2013-2014 school year budget is $159 million. It includes using $2.14 million from the district’s reserves, increases in class size and a slight decrease in dollars spent per student.

Cathy Lewis, president of the Schenectady school board, said that Spring’s compensation is fair for the demands of the job.

“Just because you’re a poor district doesn’t mean you don’t require skills and talent,” she said. “I feel strongly that Larry is fairly compensated.”

In the comptroller’s report released last week, the 1,500-student Watervliet City School District was also designated cash-strapped, and was named the state’s most fiscally strained district.

There, Superintendent Lori Caplan earns an $130,000 annual salary. She also agreed to a two-and-a-half-year pay freeze, ending in July 2014.

© 2014, Albany Times Union