A lot of pressure is on the top paid administrators and Superintendents around the state. South County Truth Spot has this from Mehlville:

According to the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) the average administrator's salary in the Mehlville School District is $96,484 which is in the top 1% of all Missouri Schools.

The average teacher’s salary is $49,810 a year. Teachers in 2007 worked a total of 1099.6 hours. That translates to $45.30 per hour. The length of a teacher's working day is 6.40 hours.

We are aware that starting salaries are much less and teachers with over 15 years of service earn over $64,000 a year.

The current Board of Education seems to believe that teachers are underpaid. We disagree.

If Mehlville School Board members and their Central Office minions are serious about spending more per student, perhaps they could reduce the number of administrators and teachers then divert those resources into books, computers and advanced curriculum.

The South County Truth Spot does not expect that to happen.

The Mehlville Board of Education has advocated hiring more teachers to service a declining enrollment. The current Board dances to the tune of the Mehlville National Education Association (MNEA - the teachers union) who advocate "smaller class size" so it can sign up more members and collect more union dues. Taxpayers can only expect more spending and less academic achievement from students as a result of these disastrous policies.

And Janese Heavin’s blog at the Columbia Daily Tribune rounds it out with some figures from Columbia:

Sure, a CPS teacher can earn $66,478. They just have to work three decades and earn a doctorate degree or the equivalent.

The district has 125 employees earning more than that.

With budget cuts looming, the Tribune requested the CPS payroll. Here's a summary of what it shows.

Superintendent Phyllis Chase makes $200,340, which is $77,000 more than she made when she began her tenure in Columbia in 2003.

Seventeen other public school employees make more than $100,000 a year, including six assistant superintendents, nine principals, the business director and the director of special services.

Columbia Public Schools employs 67 salaried administrative support staff employees, including 29 who earn more than $50,000 a year.

The district also has 24 administrative staff members who are not salaried and earn between $11.60 and $19.92 an hour; 15 salaried secretaries who make between $22,141 and $56,444; and 231 hourly secretaries who make between $11 and $18.52 an hour.

It looks like this will be a topic as school board elections loom and a hurdle as school districts ask for levies and increased funding. Residents from Columbia and Mehlville may balk at the prospect of having to pay more to make sure their teachers (especially new teachers who are hard to retain) are well-compensated when they consider that the most significant raises are going to administration, and they don’t get to vote on those salary increases. It’s a tough decision—do residents refuse to pay to force the hand of administrators, on the off chance that they will readjust their pay schedules to benefit teachers? Folks from Mehlville and Columbia can certainly vote to oust the board and Superintendents, but what if they believe the administration is doing a good job but aren’t ready to approve their salaries at the expense of good teachers? And then, as the inverse triangle of spending trickles down to per-pupil spending, residents may be even more torn in Mehlville. Should voters approve tax increases so that everyone in the system gets more, or try to get a redistribution of current funds—a process that could take a while?

One thing is certain, though: some Missouri Superintendents are already in favor of merit pay!