Concerns Rise Over School Admin Salaries While Lunch Plans Unfold

Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters made a bold announcement yesterday about the Oklahoma school lunch program. An initiative to provide meals for every student, yet it's getting very mixed reviews. The big question remains:

How can Oklahoma pay for this?

I would normally begin with "love him or hate him," Ryan Walters doesn't seem to have any fans on either side of the political spectrum these days in Oklahoma, but he is bringing a little attention to a huge problem in the Oklahoma school system: superintendent pay. It has skyrocketed in the last few years, and it has every parent wondering what they're leaving behind for the classrooms.

Oklahomans know our tax dollars are funding school leaders’ paychecks more than ever, but the lesser-known factoid may be that some school districts are giving more than half of their total money to just one person at the top of the heap.

Administrator Pay vs. Classroom Cash

After a little research on the internet, I found an article from the nonprofit Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs on the subject from April this year. In nearly 150 districts, only about half of the total money schools receive is used towards teaching kids. Meanwhile, the superintendent is getting the rest, and that percentage of the budget is leaning farther away from students every year.

Take Union Public Schools as an example. Back in 2018, their superintendent earned $278,000. Many people would agree that was an absurd amount back then, but in 2024, it jumped to $446,000.

While it'd be easy to jump on that number with a fiery disdain, administrators aren't the only wolves in our educational henhouse. If you do the math through the publicly available financial records, only about half of the total money ends up in the classrooms across the state, thanks to inflated wages among the highest school earners.

It's important to note, this isn't teacher pay gone awry. It's crazy to juxtapose teacher pay with admin pay. One is as low as possible, the other is wildly off the charts.

This is happening in more school districts than you think.

Administrative pay around the state.

Oklahoma City Public Schools: $419,265 salary; 48% for instruction.

Tulsa Public Schools: $379,281 salary; 47% for teaching.

Muskogee Public Schools: $274,330 salary; 47% for the classrooms.

Lawton Public Schools: $305,945 salary; 51% of funds reach the classrooms.

Many districts - Midwest City, Del City, Jenks, Broken Arrow, and Bixby - all follow the same pattern of high superintendent salaries, low-grade expenses, and weak test results. Bixby stands out in the worst light as less than half of the students tested as "proficient" across the board.

Some good comes with the bad. 

Not all districts are the same. In places like Bethany and McCord, about 63% of the funds go directly to the classroom. While their superintendents earn much lower salaries, the higher per-student spending gets results. These districts crushed the state average in student skills and proficiency, vastly higher.

All the same, even with hugely inflated administrative pay, Yukon is a successful standout in student performance and quality of education.

Student spending is on the rise, but it's tied to the wacko inflation America experienced over the last federal administration.

Oklahoma increased spending from $9,000 to $13,700 per student, but student performance didn't increase in kind. Similarly, Oklahoma superintendent salaries increased from $59.9 million to $75.4 million over the same period.

Is it really that hard to provide our school kids with a meal? 

For most, the answer is obvious. Doubling administrator pay hasn't doubled student proficiency. It seems that's at least one area where funds could be adjusted in the yearly budgets.