Public sector salaries: Small B.C. school board sits atop pay list
Credit to Author: Lori Culbert| Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2020 23:51:07 +0000
A relatively small school district had some of the top salaries in the Lower Mainland in 2017/18.
Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows is about one-fifth the size of Surrey, B.C.’s largest school board, and yet some Maple Ridge school officials were paid among the top salaries compared to other school districts, according to our public sector salaries database.
Postmedia analyzed the salaries of 12,000 employees in 14 school districts — 11 in Metro Vancouver, plus Abbotsford, Chilliwack and Mission — for the year 2017-18.
We looked at the 25 highest paid employees, who all made more than $170,000, and found four worked in Maple Ridge, which has 15,000 students to administer, and four worked in Surrey, with a student population of 72,000. Vancouver, the second largest district with 49,000 students, had three top-earners, as did Richmond, a medium-sized district with 19,500 students.
For all of these boards, the superintendent was the highest paid employee and the others were mainly assistant superintendents or directors/treasurers. The exception was in Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows, where the high-earners included a human resources project consultant, the manager of purchasing and transportation, and a principal who had remuneration of $192,000.
In Maple Ridge, superintendent Sylvia Russell’s compensation was determined by the salary grid prepared by B.C. Public School Employers’ Association and approved by Public Sector Employers’ Council, said Irena Pochop, the district’s senior manager of communications,
“It reflects market-level compensation that is based on a review of total compensation in comparable school districts and other public sector organizations,” Pochop said by email in response to specific questions about salaries.
Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows board of education. Superintendent Sylvia Russell is bottom row, second from left.
The other top three salaries were paid to long-serving employees of the school district who retired in 2018 and were eligible to receive retirement allowances, which were eliminated from employment contracts starting in 2010, Pochop said.
“The remuneration listed on the (statement of financial information) for these three positions therefore includes salary plus a one-time retirement allowance,” she added.
The Sun collected salary data on nearly 90,000 public sector workers who make at least $75,000 annually from approximately 100 public-sector employers, including the provincial government, city halls and universities. With this data, we produced a searchable database containing the names, titles, work places and remuneration of these public employees.
Postmedia manually calculated that women represented only one-third of the 25 highest earners at school boards.
To look at the gender breakdown of all the workers in our database, we submitted their first names to Gender-API.com. Results with less than a 95 per cent confidence score from the API were excluded from the analysis, leaving us with reliable gender information for two-thirds of the 90,000 public sector employees.
We then analyzed the number of female employees and their pay compared to men at school districts, after removing unionized positions — such as teachers — whose salaries are based according to collective agreements. That left us with a variety of senior positions, including principals and superintendents.
When it came to principals, boards such as Surrey, Burnaby and Abbotsford employed the same or more women than men, and the two genders earned approximately the same median salary.
Some districts employ more female principals, but their male counterparts make higher median salaries, including West Vancouver (men make $11,000 more), North Vancouver ($9,000 more), Vancouver ($6,500 more), and Maple Ridge ($6,000 more).
Chris Kennedy, superintendent and CEO of West Vancouver schools, said by email that administrator salaries are on a scale based on the level of school and years of experience: Secondary school administrators and principals are paid more than elementary school administrators and principals.
Chris Kennedy, superintendent and CEO, West Vancouver School District. Photo: School District
“When you look at the demographics of our administration teams, the secondary school administration teams have a greater percentage of males than our elementary administration teams,” he said.
In West Vancouver schools, there are eight male secondary and elementary school principals and six female. There are four male secondary and elementary school vice principals and 16 female.
When it came to superintendents, five of the boards we analyzed had women in charge, while the other nine employed men. The three highest-paid superintendents in 2017-18 were men in Surrey, New Westminster and Abbotsford.
Former New Westminster School Superintendent Pat Duncan is now retired, but in 2017/18 had a top salary.
Most of the boards we examined had a gender mix when it came to superintendents, along with assistant and associate superintendents. One exception was North Vancouver, which has three men in the top positions of its executive team. The only woman is the secretary-treasurer.
We also analyzed the pay gap between the median salary of men and women in director and manager positions at school boards in 2017/18 and found some glaring examples in three boards:
• In Coquitlam, the three male directors made a median salary $20,000 higher than the two female directors.
• In North Vancouver, the four male managers made a median salary $15,000 higher than the two female managers.
• In Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows, the six male managers made a median salary $15,000 higher than the four female managers.
The database includes pay for more than 88,800 public servants working at over 100 public sector agencies, including the provincial government, Crown corporations, health authorities, municipalities, universities and colleges, school districts and municipal police departments. The figures were gathered from publicly available compensation disclosure reports and freedom of information requests.
Remuneration information includes base salary, overtime, vacation payouts and severance.
Depending on how an agency reports financial data, information is from either the 2017-18 fiscal year or the 2018 calendar year.
You can search the database at: vancouversun.com/salaries
Series Box
Saturday — Part 1: The gender wage gap
Monday — Part 2: The provincial government
Tuesday — Part 3: Municipal governments
Wednesday — Part 4: Universities and colleges
Thursday — Part 5: School boards
Friday — Part 6: Crown corporations
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