Pay raises for SDSM administrators top 15% over four years

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about an open records request I made to get a full and accurate accounting of all the pay raises received by administrators within the South Milwaukee School District over the past four years.  Shortly after that blog entry, I finally received the information I requested, and after reviewing the pay raises administrators for the school district of South Milwaukee have received over the past four years, all I can say is I’m thinking I’d like to get the kinds of raises administrators are getting in South Milwaukee.  Here’s a list of the raises administrators have received over the past four years:

YEAR	INCREASE
2008-2009	4.10%
2007-2008	4.20%
2006-2007	4.52%
2005-2006	2.60%

As the table shows, administrators in the South Milwaukee school district received raises totaling 15.42% over the past four years.  I don’t know about you all, but I’d love to receive pay increases totaling nearly 16% over four years, especially if I were making over $100,000 a year, as is the case with a number of administrators for the South Milwaukee school district.

While I’m not opposed to giving raises to administrators within the South Milwaukee school district, I do question the wisdom of continually giving healthy pay raises to administrators while the district faced annual budget deficits.  For the past several years, the School Board has had to make tough budget cuts in the face of perenniel budget deficits in order to balance the district’s budget, and yet despite being forced to make those cuts – cuts which often affect the students within the district – the school board hasn’t seemed to believe freezing administrator salaries was necessary.  With tax dollars and young minds of South Milwaukee on the line, shouldn’t we expect more from our school board?

Cross-posted to South Milwaukee NOW.