For clarification, I will not name the school I worked at. My wife is currently employed there.
A few years ago, I was laid off at my job. I was a payroll specialist. In need of employment, I applied at the private school. My wife was already on staff, but had only been there two years and she put in a good word for me. I interviewed and requested a salary of $40K per year(previous was $45K). They were only offering $30K and after a bit of back and forth, the best they could do was $33K.
It was a decent job, not too stressful. I had been there for around 6 months or so when I'm leaving for the day, my truck decides to not start. Here I am, hood open trying to figure out what's wrong when the president of the school drives on by on his golf cart. Drives right in front of my truck, never slows down, never stops.
I had already noticed the salaries were pretty low but not uncommon for a private school. High school teachers needed a bachelor's and they topped out at $24K a year…yes, you read that correct. Pre-k to 8th grade topped out at $20K. They didn't need a degree but they needed teaching experience plus needing to pass a test. The only perk was the tuition discount for children of staff members. They offered no insurance, no 401K. The only staff members that made over $24K were payroll/accounting($28-33K), the two asst principals($35K), elementary/high school principals($40K) and the superintendent($50k). That isn't including family members of the school president. I'll get to that later. Also, staff were automatically deducted 10% of their pay for “tithes”. (Sorry, mistyped. Only church staff is required to tithe, not school employees. Probably not legal anyways.)
I started doing a bit of number crunching just for fun. This will sound like one of those math problems back in school so I apologize. Pre-K-8th grade has three classes each with 25 students each. That's 750 kids in elementary. High school has ten classes with 25 kids each. That's 250.
Elementary tuition is $500/month. The school offers ZERO tuition assistance/financial aid. If you are staff and have a child that attends the school, you get a discount on tuition. For the fun of it, let's say five kids from each elementary class is a staff child. We won't even count those. So, 20 kids per class, the school would receive $3.6 million yearly in tuition. That's just elementary. In high school, 20% of students received a partial or full scholarship(sports) so we won't count them. We also won't count any staff children, so let's put the high school numbers at 150 students at $700/month. In a year, that number is $1.2 million. Parents pay tuition 12 months out of the year.
As of right now, we're at $4.8 million. Let's now include, re-registration fees($225), book fees($150), and lunch($650). The first two are mandatory for all students and the lunch is either pay in full, monthly, or bring your own. Let's be generous and say 800 students paid for everything. That's another $800K. From what I gather, they don't buy many new books per year.
We are now sitting at $5.6 million. Again, this is being generous on the lower end. We are now turning towards staff salaries. Thirty elementary teachers at $20K per year = $600K. Fifteen high school teachers at $24K= $360K.
Elementary- $600K
High School- $360K
Asst Principals- $70K
Principals-$80K
Accounting- $120K
Superintendent- $50K
Various Support- $500K(throwing out this number on a generous basis)
Total Staff- $1.78 million
I know the utility bill ran anywhere from $10K-$20K per month.
Now, after all this, let's get to the school president(and his family) salaries.
He and his wife have 5 children. Two are currently students at that school(and they pay NO tuition). One is in college. The other two work at the school. One is the “IT manager”(salary $65K) and every time he had to do anything IT related, you couldn't find him. I knew more than he did. The other one is the “Facilities Manager”(salary $55K) and he actually did some work so I won't bust his chops.
The school president's wife brought in a salary of $50K per year. She did absolutely nothing and I only saw the woman twice.
The school president's salary was a whopping $400K per year. He was also a pastor who proudly told his church members every Sunday that he didn't take a salary from the church. It's true..but he took it from the school. A local car dealership gave he and his wife brand new vehicles every 3-5 years and the school paid insurance on the vehicles. He and his wife's cell phone bills were covered by the school. When I was there, they were about to close on a $1.8 MILLION dollar home. The area we live in, $300K would get you a very nice home.
As soon as my kids graduate, or my wife is no longer employed there, I'm uploading all these documents for the entire city to see where their hard earned money they pay for tuition is really going to.