Long Island educators' pay: 64 earned $300G or more during 2024-25 school year, data shows

More than 100 educators across the state earned $300,000 or more in the 2024-25 school year, the majority of them on Long Island — including one long-serving superintendent who recently retired with a final-year package totaling $662,478, state records show.

That superintendent, Hank Grishman, of Jericho, topped the state’s latest compensation list for public school officials, according to payroll records obtained by Newsday. Another Long Island educator, Superintendent Allison Brown, of Roslyn, was third on the list with compensation of $391,906, while Superintendent Francesco Ianni, of Oyster Bay-East Norwich was No. 4 at $383,549.

In all, seven of the state’s 10 top-paid public-school employees in 2024-25 worked on Long Island, which experts have said reflects the region’s high living costs.

recommendedSearch the latest educator payrolls

Newsday’s annual payroll review was drawn from data provided by the New York State Teachers’ Retirement System through the state’s Freedom of Information Law. The latest survey, for the 2024-25 school year, covers 263,868 educators statewide, with combined payment of nearly $19.7 billion. That includes 60,939 workers in Nassau and Suffolk counties, with payments of $6.4 billion.

Statewide, the number of educators earning $300,000 or more rose nearly 50% over three years, from 70 in 2022-23 to 92 the following year and 104 in 2024-25. Long Island’s numbers increased at a similar rate, from 44 in 2022-23 to 64 last school year.

For educators earning between $200,000 and $300,000, statewide numbers rose from 1,399 in 2022-23 to 1,662 in 2023-24 to 1,984 last school year. Island totals increased from 790 to 976 to 1,129 in the same time frame. Statewide and regional growth topped 40% over three years.

Most of the employees in the New York State Teachers’ Retirement System are administrators, teachers and other public school professionals such as counselors and librarians employed by local school districts. Also included are smaller numbers of administrators and faculty employed by the State University of New York, which represent 1.3% of the statewide total.

SUNY employees were excluded from Newsday’s latest top 10 ranking, since salary levels in the statewide university network are not comparable to those set by local school districts. In recent years, the highest paid individual enrolled in the teachers’ retirement system was Joyce Brown, president of Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan, which is part of SUNY. Brown announced she was stepping down in August 2024, with a package of $782,760.

Top-paid public school employees on the Island also included Kathleen Bannon, of Copiague schools at No. 5, with total compensation of $377,583; Kevin Scanlon, of the Three Village district, No. 6 with $376,761; Michael Nagler, of Mineola, No. 7 at $370,542 and Kenneth Bossert, of Great Neck, No. 10 with $357,000.

Also high in the rankings were three district school chiefs in other parts of the state: Patrick Jensen, recently retired superintendent from the Southern Cayuga district in the Finger Lakes region, No. 2 at $403,115; Amy Creeden, who is on leave from the Middletown City district in the lower Hudson region, No. 8 with $362,109 and Joseph Ricca, superintendent of White Plains in Westchester County, No. 9 at $357,744.

In Three Village, school board president Susan Megroz Rosenzweig declined to comment on the superintendent's compensation. Representatives of the Copiague and Great Neck districts provided some details, but would not comment on the compensation itself. The other four Island districts with educators in the top 10 list did not respond to Newsday’s phone calls.

Payout controversy

In a recent phone interview with Newsday, Grishman defended his high compensation, which he said stemmed both from the length of his service and his success in helping to maintain and expand Jericho’s record as one of the highest achieving school systems in the nation and state.

In August, the 3,200-student district’s high school was ranked by U.S. News and World Report as the best on Long Island, 9th best in New York State and 108th best in the nation, Newsday has reported. In October, the district’s three elementary schools as well as its middle school were all named among the state’s top 50 in their respective categories.

National rankings for high schools are based largely on students’ passage rates on college-level Advanced Placement tests — a program Grishman helped build on the local level starting more than 15 years ago.

“I’ve been a school superintendent for 47 years — it’s the longest-serving superintendency in New York State,” said Grishman, 80. “Over the years, we’ve received state and national recognition, both for our students’ accomplishments and our staff’s accomplishment.”

Grishman also gets high marks from colleagues for his frequent role as a mentor to other school administrators across the state. In September, he was awarded a Distinguished Service Award from the New York State Council of School Superintendents, which represents more than a thousand administrators statewide. Grishman served as the organization’s president during the 2007-08 school year.

But the Jericho school chief’s final pay package highlights a practice that has come under fire, because nearly half came from a retirement payout for unused sick and vacation days. Contractual payouts, while common among school district and municipal employees in New York State, are much criticized by conservative fiscal experts who consider the practice to be financially risky.

Grishman’s 2024-25 compensation figure combines both his regular salary and benefits of $343,172.85 with $319,305.54 in payouts, the retired schools chief told Newsday.

In 2011, Grishman announced he was taking a five-year salary freeze, Newsday reported at the time. The move was prompted in part by public protests that erupted after a superintendent in a nearby district acknowledged that her salary had been set at $405,000 — a record amount.

Grishman’s last contract with the Jericho district, also negotiated in 2011 and later extended to 2025, granted the schools chief up to 54 sick days and 24 vacation days a year and, upon retirement, to cash in unused sick days equivalent to a maximum one year’s salary.

“I’ve accrued a sizable number of sick leaves and vacation leaves and that’s accounting for the additional dollars that I received in my payout," Grishman said.

A spokesperson for the Copiague district told Newsday via email that Bannon’s compensation included both payouts for unused sick and vacation time, as well as salary and contractual benefits. A Great Neck representative said in a message that the figure for Bossert was for salary alone.

Michael Hoose, interim superintendent in Southern Cayuga, told Newday via phone that he did not have details on Jensen’s salary, but that his predecessor had succeeded in raising student achievement and maintaining school facilities.

“During his tenure, math achievement rose significantly, and the place looks great,” Hoose said.

Ken Girardin, former research director for the fiscally conservative think tank Empire Center for Public Policy in Albany, said in a phone interview that payouts were widespread and, in his view, financially irresponsible. As an example Girardin cited the City of Long Beach, which has borrowed millions of dollars since 2012 to fund high-cost payouts, as reported by Newsday.

“We see it in superintendent contracts, we see it in teacher contracts, we see it in police contracts,” Girardin said of payout provisions. “There have been instances where payouts are so substantial that local governments go into debt and borrow to pay off these types of payments. The Legislature has the authority to limit this, and it would be entirely appropriate either to cap or prohibit certain types of payouts, in part because you are creating a future cost without setting aside adequate funds to pay for it.”

Girardin is now a research fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research and advocacy center in New York City.

A 2020 review by Newsday found that government obligations for such payments for police, teachers and other public employees totaled $2.1 billion on Long Island and $8.7 billion statewide. Legislation proposed to curb such costs had routinely been defeated in State Assembly committees since 2016, Newsday found. Last year, the State Legislature actually moved to boost pensions by basing calculations on the average of employees' three highest salary years, down from five, for those hired after April 2012.

“The problem doesn’t go away,” said State Assemb. Michael Fitzpatrick (R-St. James), a persistent sponsor of bills to contain costs. He spoke to Newsday by phone.

Grishman noted that school districts routinely maintain cash reserves to cover payouts.

“That account in Jericho is well funded to take care of all 700 employee when they retire.” he added.

Supporters of payouts contend that such compensation serves as an incentive for good attendance on the job and as an aid in recruiting top-notch school administrators.

“Taking the big picture, it’s already hard enough to get people to leave their classrooms and become administrators,” Chuck Dedrick, executive director for the New York State Council of School Superintendents, said in a phone interview. “If this [payouts] were to go away, more people would be discouraged from taking administrative jobs, and that would be a disaster.”

Critics of payouts noted that these are rarely available to workers in the private sector. One regional taxpayer advocate, Andrea Vecchio, of East Islip, recalled in an interview that in 1992, a former BOCES superintendent on the Island cashed in more than $900,000 in unused leave and retirement incentives, touching off statewide protests.

“These abuses are nothing new — it’s got to stop,” she said.