Ninety employees from New York’s school districts (outside New York City) received more than $300,000 during fiscal year 2025, according to new salary data posted today at SeeThroughNY.net, the Empire Center’s transparency website.
The public educator pay data are based on salary information reported to New York State Teachers’ Retirement System (NYSTRS), which covers 240,601 public school teachers, superintendents, principals, and other administrators employed outside New York City. The data posted, also includes pay records for 141,694 school district employees, who are members of the New York State and Local Retirement System (NYSLRS).
A total of 78,866 school district educators received six figure compensation – representing nearly one-third (32.8%) of all NYSTRS educators. Out of these, 2,005 received more than $200,000, a 19 percent increase since the previous year (1,688). The majority (68 percent) of those employees who received six-figure compensation were employed in downstate suburban districts, including 34,325 in Long Island and 19,336 in Westchester, Orange, and Rockland counties.
Henry Grishman, a now retired Superintendent at the Jericho Union Free School District in Nassau County received the highest total pay of $662,478 – more than double of Governor Hochul’s salary of $250,000 and forty percent higher than State Education Department (NYSED) Commissioner Betty Rosa’s salary of $464,000. Among the upstate regions, Patrick Jensen, who recently retired as the Superintendent at Southern Cayuga Central School District, topped the list with $403,116.
Full-Time Educator Compensation Soars
The records include total compensation made by the school districts to all its educators, including part-time employment.
The average for full-time employees (FTE) – defined here as any employee paid more than the annualized lowest statewide minimum wage during the 2024-2025 fiscal year – was $97,506. The median compensation was $90,822. Full-time employees on Long Island and in the Mid-Hudson region earned the highest average pay at $118,591 and $114,801 respectively. Further upstate, the Western New York Region was the highest paying region ($84,993); the lowest paying region was the North Country ($73,315).
Full-time NYSTRS members in 206 school districts averaged more than $100,000 in pay – the highest being Scarsdale Union Free School District ($150,828) in Westchester County, where nearly 89 percent of its 531 FTE educators received over $100,000. Superintendent Andrew Patrick topped the district’s list of highest paid employees with a total compensation of $325,552.
All but five of Long Island’s school districts averaged more than $100,000 for their full-time employees. Jericho UFSD topped the list in Nassau County with an average pay of $146,902, while Half Hollow Hills CSD averaged the highest from Suffolk County at $141,935. Patrick Harrigan, retired Superintendent of the district was paid the highest in the district with a total pay of $339,052.
In the Capital Region, South Colonie Central School District had the highest average FTE educator pay at $94,727, followed by Shenendehowa ($93,826) and Windham-Ashland-Jewett ($92,653). South Colonie Superintendent David Perry was the highest paid in the region, with a total reported pay of $280,948, followed by (Retired) Superintendent Llewellyn Robinson ($264,217) from Shenendehowa and Superintendent John Carmello ($246,751) from Troy City School District.
Among the Big Five school districts, Yonkers averaged $141,974, Buffalo averaged $91,352, Rochester averaged $80,403 and Syracuse averaged $76,227 for their total educator pay. Albany City School District averaged $87,351.
FTE Average Pay by School District
Additional Pay Records from NYSTRS
In addition to the school district educators, the data also includes pay for 7,303 employees from certain charter schools, community colleges, vocational boards, state education department, and Fashion Institute of Technology that report to NYSTRS.
Joyce Brown, President of the Fashion Institute of Technology, received a total pay of $782,761. Among the 3,177 charter school employees whose data was reported to NYSTRS, Superintendent Raymond Ankrum from Riverhead Charter School in Long Island, received the highest total pay of $282,599. Tolga Hayali, Superintendent of Syracuse Academy of Science Charter School and Joseph Polat, Executive Director of Buffalo Academy of Science Charter School were the other top earners, receiving $248,172 and $219,491 respectively.
Contracts between school districts and their teachers and superintendents, detailing compensation and other terms and conditions of employment, are also available on SeeThroughNY. The Empire Center earlier published the median pay for teachers in New York during school year 2023-24.
Data Notes:
- The analysis above considers the pay data received from NYSTRS. The full data uploaded to SeethroughNY also includes pay data from NYSLRS, which primarily covers school district employees in non-teaching positions.
- The records reflect pay during the fiscal year ending June 30 for teachers, administrators and other members of the state Teachers’ Retirement System (NYSTRS) and March 31 for employees belonging to the New York State and Local Retirement System (NYSLRS). Pay figures do not reflect the cost of employee benefits such as health coverage and pensions. They do not include school personnel who were paid by the district while also collecting a public pension.
- The pay data represents gross earnings (unaudited) reported to NYSTRS by the employer. In addition to base salary, the earnings displayed may include payments for summer school instruction, instructional pay, non-regular compensation, termination pay and other payments that may or may not be includable in the calculation of the member’s retirement benefit.
- The data refers to all the payments made to NYSTRS members during the school year. This includes several instances of multiple payments received by many NYSTRS members, who are not likely working on a full-time basis.
- Since the data we receive does not indicate whether an employee is full-time or not, we conservatively estimated average pay for full-time employees by assuming that any NYSTRS members who received total pay during the year equal to or greater than the annualized minimum wage rate were full-time employees.
The Empire Center, based in Albany, is an independent, not-for-profit, non-partisan think tank dedicated to promoting policies that can make New York a better place to live, work and raise a family.
