As hundreds of Texas school districts insist that they are broke and need to raise taxes, last week the Lake Travis ISD voted to give superintendent Rocky Kirk a $6,000 pay raise. This brings his base salary to $231,520, which does not include numerous benefits.

It is well out of proportion with other similarly sized districts. Superintendents of much larger districts make considerably less, such as Montgomery County ISD ($177,650), McAllen ISD ($184,000), and San Marcos ISD ($161,000). However, there are other examples of salaries that are out of line with similarly-sized districts.

Beaumont ISD Superintendent Carroll Thomas has a whopping base salary of $322,117, the second highest in the state. And remember these are base salaries - many superintendents receive not just health insurance and pensions, but also life insurance, car allowances, and health club memberships.

Worst of all, many times when a superintendent must be removed for poor performance, districts must pay hundreds of thousands for work that is never done because these contracts are multi-year. School districts need to look carefully at both the pay of their top administrators as well as the compensation and number of non-teaching staff working in their central office before they ask yet again for more taxpayer money.

The full Texas Education Agency list of Texas superintendent base salaries is online [1]. And read the Austin American Statesman article about Rocky Kirk's payraise [2].