How much do charter school employees take home?

Teachers and principals are paid according to contracts their unions make with the city, but charter schools have discretion over staff members’ salaries. Now someone has mined forms submitted to the IRS by charter schools and their management organizations to create a database of how city charter schools pay their employees.

The database was compiled by Kim Gittleson, a research assistant employed by Ken Hirsh, a GothamSchools funder who also writes for the site’s Community section.

Head over to the community section to access the database and read about what Gittleson found. Here’s a sample:

  • The highest salary for a charter school leader or CMO executive is $494,269 ($515,258 with pension and expense accounts). The lowest salary is $86,057 (there were no listed pension or expense accounts for this person). …
  • The average salary for a charter school principal is $120,454. The median is $124,000. The average salary for a DOE principal is $133,680 and the median is $133,490, according to data provided by SeeThroughNY.