School Superintendents' Pay Varies Across Arkansas.

WHILE THE ARKANSAS General Assembly searches for money to give across-the-board raises to public school teachers, the salaries being paid to the 310 top school executives in Arkansas vary greatly.

Salaries for full-time superintendents ranged from $31,989 at Altheimer Unified School District in Jefferson County to $143,655 for the Little Rock School School District. On a per-student basis, however, the differences in pay are especially striking.

For example, it costs 32 times as much per student to pay school superintendents in Newton County than it does in Pulaski County.

Pulaski County's three school districts -- Little Rock (24,462 students), Pulaski County Special (18,403 students) and North Little Rock (8,672 students) -- spend $6, $7 and $13 per student to pay their respective superintendents. That's an average of $7.33 per student countywide.

The three districts cumulatively serve 865 square miles, and average pay for teachers was $35,110 in 1997-98 -- $3,315 more than the state average.

With a total of 1,345 students, Newton County's four school districts--Deer (255 students), Jasper (569 students), Mount Judea (240 students) and Western Grove (281 students) -- spend $233, $111, $221 and $199 per student on superintendent salaries. That's an average of $172 per student.

The Newton County districts serve 769 square miles and paid their teachers an average of $28,593 in 1997-98, $3,202 less than the state average.

"It's comparing apples and oranges because you're not taking into account the assistant superintendents...working on transportation, curriculum, federal programs, personnel and a lot of different specialties," said Truett Goatcher, director of research for the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators in Little Rock. "The superintendents in Newton County do all those tasks themselves."

Arkansas Business used salary and enrollment information provided by the Arkansas Department of Education to determine approximately how much each of Arkansas' 310 public school superintendents are paid on a per-student basis.

The most recent salary figure available was for the 1999-2000 school year, while the most recent enrollment count is from this school year. Therefore, the per-student calculation was not perfect and could be skewed by substantial changes in enrollment or in the superintendent's salary.

The most recent data on average teacher pay in the districts dates to the 1997-98 school year.

The total salary paid to the 310 superintendents was $21.1 million to administer educational programs for 447,713 students. On average, public school superintendents serve 1,444 students and are paid $68,173 a year, or $47 per student.

But 230 school districts in Arkansas -- almost three-quarters -- have fewer than 1,444 students. The salaries paid to superintendents serving the 140,672 students in those smaller-than-average districts added up to $14.2 million in the 1999-2000 year. In other words, 74 percent of the superintendents were paid 67 percent of the total spent on superintendent salaries for serving 31 percent of the state's public school students.

Predictably, the state's smallest school district, Witts Springs, paid the highest superintendent salary on a perstudent basis -- just as the largest district, Little Rock, paid the lowest salary per student.

Witts Springs has no assistant superintendent, Goatcher pointed out.

In addition to having the highest per-student salaries for their superintendents, smaller school districts also tended to have below-average teacher salaries.

Witts Springs School District in Searcy County has 70 students in kindergarten through 12th grade. Superintendent Glenda D. Hendrix's salary in 1999-2000 was $43,488, on $621 per student. The school serves 143 square miles and paid its teachers an average of $23,010 in 1997-98 -- $8,785 below the state average for that school year.

Washington County paid a total of $701,439 to its school district's nine superintendents last school year. With 26,539 students spread across 955 square miles, an average of $26 per student went toward superintendent salaries last year.

Teacher pay in Washington County as a whole averaged $31,756 in 1997-98, less than the state average. However, average teacher pay in the Fayetteville School District (7,957 students) and the Springdale School District (11,422 students) was $4,550 and $6,060 more than the state average.

Winslow reported an average teacher salary in 1997-98 of $27,792, the lowest average teacher salary in Washington County.