New York hates to be behind its Hudson River rival ? New Jersey ? but new Empire State Governor Andrew Cuomo is doing a nice job keeping up with his Garden State comrade-in-chief Chris Christie with education blasts.?
This morning, Cuomo makes an appearance on the front page of the New York Times,?uttering?unsympathetic comments about ?the salaries of some of ?New York's school superintendents; most notably, one Long Island schools chief, who makes $386,868 (over $500,000 with?benefits!) overseeing just 6,687 students and a budget of just over $176 million; that's?more than double the governor's?salary but a bit less than the $133 billion that the Governor oversees.? Said the Times:
Eye-popping.
Said Cuomo:
I understand that they sometimes have to manage budgets, and sometimes the budgets are difficult.? But why they get paid more than the governor of the state I really don't understand.
In fact, according to the Times, Cuomo,? who will be making $179,000 to run New York State, is earning less than?more than 40 percent of the state's 700+ school superintendents.? (Christie is proposing a $175,000 cap on most of New Jersey superintendents, thank you very much.)
Whether this "alternative villain" is enough to convince New Yorkers that a 7% cut in state aid to education might just be warranted is anyone's guess. Number 1 in spending,?the state's?8th-graders?rank in middle of the pack in NAEP math tests -- so its citizens may not understand the numbers here.
?--Peter Meyer, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow
