Click here to see the District 97 administrator salary and benefits report.
Click here to see the District 200 administrator salary and benefits report.
Not surprising, but the two highest paid employees at both of Oak Park’s public school districts are the respective superintendents, according to salary information released by districts 97 and 200.
Administrators’ salaries for the 2011-2012 school year were released publicly this month by both school districts, as required by a 2009 state law.
Superintendents Albert Roberts (D97) and Steven Isoye (D200/OPRF) make $195,000 and $208,000, respectively, in base salary. But, along with other administrator and teacher salaries, they trend higher when retirement and other potential compensation packages are factored in. Isoye’s total compensation as OPRF’s superintendent, for instance, is roughly $260,000 for this school year.
Neither is it surprising that the chief financial officers for both districts are next in line when it comes to pay. Therese O’Neill, D97’s assistant superintendent for finance and operations, earns a base salary of nearly $142,000, while Cheryl Witham, chief financial officer for OPRF, earns about $191,000.
The ’09 disclosure law requires all school districts to release only administrative salaries publicly and to make them available on their websites. OPRF, however, also releases teachers’ salaries, which is not required under the law.
Oak Park school salaries are not the highest in the state. The highest-paid school employee in the state last year wasn’t even an administrator, according to ChampionNews.net. The public policy watchdog group compiles teacher and administrative salaries on its website, based on compensation data from the Illinois State Board of Education. The group’s most up-to-date information is typically one school year behind. According to the site, in 2010, Lucille Russell, a special education teacher at Curtis Elementary School on Chicago’s far South Side made a whopping $413,000 that year, more than any other certified school employee in Illinois. Russell is listed as a “learning behavior specialist.”
Supt. Thomas Engler of Yorkville Consolidated School District 115 was next in line for 2010, earning roughly $350,000. In all, almost 200 administrators, including superintendents and assistants, made upwards of $200,000 in 2010.
Isoye and Roberts were not on the list that year because neither were superintendents in Illinois at the time the data was compiled.