The top job in a school district is no easy lift. Superintendents are essentially CEO’s of businesses beset by labor union politics, budget problems, angry parents, and tantruming children, beholden to a wide variety of stakeholders, and on call 24/7. In New Jersey, where local property taxes, at least in wealthier districts, comprise the bulk of revenue, they’re often targets of whole communities. So they deserve fair compensation, for sure, but how much is enough?
This quandary has rumbled the Garden State, especially when, in 2010, then-Governor Chris Christie set a superintendent salary cap of $150K per year to $175K (depending on district size, with exceptions for Abbott/SDA districts, county districts, and those with enrollment over 10,000). As a result, some superintendents started fleeing to greener pastures in New York and Pennsylvania. South Orange-Maplewood Superintendent Brian Osbourne’s resignation made the Wall Street Journal when he left his district and his $167,500 (capped) salary to take up a new post in New Rochelle, NY for an uncapped $265,000 a year.
After the cap was overturned by Gov. Murphy in 2019, school boards immediately started raising salaries, mostly by converting annual “merit bonuses” (a way of bypassing the cap) to pensionable income. For instance, Demarest’s superintendent Michael Fox saw his salary go from $154K in 2018 to $228K in 2021, a 48.4% increase.
Here are the salaries of the 25 most highly-paid superintendents in New Jersey, courtesy of nj.com:
Frank Gargiulo: Hudson County Schools Of Technology, $300,000
Mark Finkelstein: Educational Services Commission Of New Jersey, $300,000
Leigh Byron: Trenton Stem-To-Civics Charter School, $300,000
Roger Leon: Newark, $290,050
Teresa Segarra: Maria L. Varisco-Rogers Charter School, $281,450
Eileen Shafer: Paterson, $267,900
Victor Valeski: East Brunswick Township, $261,000
Aubrey Johnson: New Brunswick, $257,405
David Aderhold: West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional, $256,418
Charles Sampson: Freehold Regional, $255,000
David Roman: Perth Amboy, $252,708
David Miceli: New Providence, $248,828
Henry Poteat: Winslow Township, $248,466
Silvia Abbato: Union City, $248,331
Michael Lasusa: Chatham, $247,832
Carol Birnbohm: Lenape Regional, $244,686
Christine Burton: Millburn Township, $244,664
Matthew Murphy: Ramsey, $244,007
Scott Feder: South Brunswick, $242,267
James Jencarelli: Morris Hills Regional, $241,129
Richard Tomko: Belleville, $240,439
