How does Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation compare to other school systems in Indiana? Here’s a look at some of the key numbers. Wochit

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EVANSVILLE, Ind. — Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation Superintendent David Smith was the highest-paid administrator in Indiana’s five largest school systems last year — and local teachers were the lowest-paid.

The pay gap is laid bare within the hundreds of thousands of numbers on Indiana Gateway for Local Government, a public access portal jointly maintained by Indiana University and the state. Gateway offers taxing, budgeting and spending reports submitted annually by local and state agencies. The data captures salaries and other public employee compensation.

Smith’s total compensation of $256,974 topped superintendents in Indianapolis Public Schools, South Bend Community School Corporation, Fort Wayne Community Schools and Hamilton Southeastern Schools in Hamilton County. 2018 is the most recent year for which the data is available.

Local teachers did not fare as well in the 2018-19 school year.

EVSC’s minimum teacher salary of $38,000, the $50,309 average and $70,000 maximum were the lowest, producing the largest gap between teacher and superintendent pay in each category.

That leaves some local classroom educators groping for answers.

Lindsey Mousa, ­­a sixth-grade teacher at Helfrich Park STEM Academy, was following her passion when she pursued a career in education. Mousa had no illusions she would rake in a fabulous salary, but she also didn’t anticipate that her two children would be on free and/or reduced lunch.

“I know there’s got to be other teachers out there who are single parents. Everybody’s situation is different. I didn’t know I would struggle to this point,” she said. “It’s frustrating and embarrassing for Indiana. It’s not fair to lay all of the blame on school corporations or on the Legislature. It’s probably a mixture of both.”

‘My second job is mom, and my third job is dad’

The Courier & Press reported in June that one out of every five teachers nationwide must take another job to make ends meet. With lower pay than their counterparts in many nearby states, teachers across Indiana need to pay off student loan debt, direct money into their children’s college funds and buy supplies.

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Second job? There are not enough hours in the day for Mousa, a single mom, to hold down a second job.

“My second job is mom, and my third job is dad,” she said. “I think, financially, if I took a second job and had to pay for someone to watch my children …. It would negate any financial gain I might see. It’s not an option.”

When the Governor’s Council visited Evansville a few months ago, Mousa overheard other teachers buzzing about the gap between Smith’s and other EVSC administrators’ salaries and their own. The sheer depth of the chasm startled her.

“That (superintendent) position does have more requirements and responsibilities than the average teacher might not have to deal with,” she said. “I’m not going to bang the drum and say we should make the same amount of money — but there was a little shock there.”

Smith knows people are talking about the pay gap. And he said he gets it — but EVSC is doing all it can for teachers with the dollars it has, he said.

“I understand the frustration. My salary is, I think, four times what the average teacher salary is. If you look at a CEO, that probably is on the very, very low end of the spectrum,” Smith said. “At one point in time, I was a beginning teacher with us also — and I, in addition to teaching, I gave private lessons. I did gigs. I also cut yards.

“Now I have, I think, five degrees later and a couple of certifications, so I’m still paying on my doctorates degree. But I understand the frustration.”

Who’s to blame?

Smith pointed a finger of responsibility — but not at EVSC.

The state — the school corporation’s primary funding source — must devote a greater percentage of its annual budget to public education, he declared.

Smith’s voice rose as he spoke, spitting out words with passion and urgency. He is as aggrieved by low teacher pay as anyone, he said.

“I’ve got teachers that are on food stamps!” Smith said. “That is so frustrating, it’s almost hurtful.

“If you have a teacher that is a single breadwinner for the family and have a couple kids, and they’re at the beginning of their career, that’s wrong,” he said, hammering home the final word for emphasis. “And the fact that the state acknowledges that public education should be a community asset — and they need to fund it that way.”

It’s easy to overlap calendar year numbers with fiscal year and school contract year numbers in the nearly indecipherable maze that is education funding in Indiana — and don’t forget the state’s biennial budget, meaning that each budget includes appropriations for two fiscal years. Also, EVSC has a particular fund within its budget from which most teachers are paid.

But it is at least possible to glean some relatable numbers to find out how much money is involved.

EVSC reports a 2019 total approved budget of $245.6 million.

Gateway for Local Government reports EVSC spent $76.2 million on “salary costs for all full-time teachers 2018-2019,” with another $4.6 million in federal grants paying for teacher salaries. EVSC spokesman Jason Woebkenberg said neither figure includes benefits, which he estimated cost tens of millions more.

Sweetening the pot

As befitting EVSC’s highest-ranking full-time employee, Smith’s pay is the highest in the school corporation. So are his pay increases.

It starts with one addition and one subtraction the School Board made to sweeten the pot for Smith when it gave him a five-year contract extension in 2017.

  • A provision allowing Smith to be paid “for no more than 10 unused vacation days per year” was altered to remove that limitation.
  • Another provision entitling him “to all benefits applicable” to administrative employees was changed to add the words, “and wage increases.”

Past pay raises also figure into the equation.

Using a collectively bargained compensation model based on employee evaluations, EVSC gave teachers a range of pay increases from 2014-15 through 2018-19. Administrators got the same 2 percent raises as teachers at the top of the pay scale.

Smith was already receiving a benefit he had been granted in his 2014 three-year contract renewal — 3 percent increases to both his base salary and deferred compensation if the School Board rated him “highly effective” or “effective” in his annual evaluation. He has received the designation every year.

After the School Board amended his contract in 2017 to make sure he got the same pay hikes other administrators were getting, he got those increases too.

Thus Smith’s combined pay hikes in school years 2017-18 and 2018-19 included both his contractual 3 percent increases for effectiveness and the raises other administrators got. He has declined potential increases to his salary and deferred compensation in 2019-20, calling it a gesture of solidarity with employees in anticipation of an increase in state funding that he says won’t keep pace with inflation.

“If I can’t do that for them I’m not going to take it myself, even though my contract calls for it,” Smith said.

Put it all together, and Smith’s total compensation increased by 34 percent in the five-year period encompassing 2014 to 2018 — from $191,677 to $256,974. In that same period, Gateway shows the average annual full-time teacher salary stayed virtually the same — from $50,116 to $50,347, a change of less than a half percent.

Smith’s compensation is determined by members of the EVSC School Board. Teacher pay is collectively bargained with the Evansville Teachers Association.

State education funding is a volatile, high-stakes game

Traditionally, school corporations serving higher-poverty student populations have received more state money than other corporations to offset the added expense of educating students who have more complex educational needs. But legislative changes, a brighter economy and large drops in at-risk student counts have begun to scramble that formula in the direction of more equal funding for all districts.

Districts with more of the latter funding — those with higher concentrations of poor students — have typically received more dollars per student than districts serving more affluent populations. Other factors include location, complexity of educating diverse school populations and a corporation’s growth.

Thus a Courier & Press analysis of 2018 state education funding data shows Indianapolis Public Schools, which serves a large population of at-risk students, receiving $9,041 per student compared to affluent Hamilton Southeastern’s $6,048. EVSC’s number: $6,733 per student.

The per-pupil division of state funds among school corporations is a volatile, high-stakes game fraught with intrigue and potential for resentment.

“In some places it appears cut-and-dried, and then in other corporations you can wonder why in the world aren’t we getting more money because of our numbers?” said Michael Adamson, director of board services for the Indiana School Boards Association. “It really becomes a huge task to try and make sure that the formula is equitable.”

Adamson, who served for 20 years as a school board member in Hendricks County, is co-author of the 2017 book, “Building Great School Board — Superintendent Teams: A Systematic Approach to Balancing Roles and Responsibilities.” Serving with the association for 13 years, he trains school boards all over the state on their responsibilities. He has his finger on the education establishment’s pulse.

“Sometimes we don’t see a rhyme or reason for the reason why one school corporation gets a tremendous amount of additional money per student for education than do the people who live right next door to them,” Adamson said.