The parking lots of some Arizona school district offices have an odd silence. The buildings themselves are unremarkable, with low rooflines, beige stucco, and flagpoles that have been slightly bent by the desert wind. However, the individuals in charge of them are earning salaries that are comparable to those of a mid-sized tech company. When you pass one of these buildings, it’s easy to assume that the woman locking up at six is going home to a sensible sedan and a teacher’s pension. The truth is frequently more akin to a private retirement fund that no one was supposed to discover and a Corvette lease.
For four months, the Goldwater Institute attempted to negotiate the contracts of forty-one superintendents. Arizona law strongly favored posting the documents online, but forty of those districts had not done so. Fees were demanded by some. Before attorneys intervened, some people just disregarded the request. Reading the report gives me the impression that the resistance wasn’t coincidental. Only the base amount typically appears in the press release because contracts are written to distribute the funds among up to ten distinct categories, such as base salary, stipend, and allowance. Parents seldom read the fine print, and journalists seldom have the time to delve deeply.
Consider Tolleson Union High School District superintendent Jeremy Calles. In terms of size, his district is the sixteenth largest in the state. Academic performance is mediocre by most standards. And yet his total compensation hovers near $490,000 a year — more than any other superintendent in Arizona, and more than $100,000 above the next closest figure. The discrepancy between what the job pays and what it seems to provide is difficult to ignore. It’s possible that he’s doing extraordinary work behind the scenes that the numbers don’t capture. It’s also possible the contract simply got away from somebody.
The perks themselves read like a tour of small absurdities. Car allowances of $1,250 a month — enough, as the report dryly notes, to lease a Corvette or buy a new car every two or three years. Vacation banks that swell to 80 days when combined with school holidays, much of which can be cashed out at the end of the year or upon departure. And, in a particularly creative twist, taxpayer-funded contributions to private retirement accounts layered on top of the state pension system. Phoenix Union High School District spends over $45,000 a year topping up its superintendent’s personal retirement fund. That’s roughly a starting teacher’s salary, paid annually, into one administrator’s nest egg.
Compare that to the classroom aide who buys her own glue sticks in August. Or the first-year teacher whose spousal health coverage is a punchline. The comparison isn’t fair, and that’s the point — it isn’t supposed to be made out loud.
What strikes you reading through the contracts, page after page, is how ordinary all of this has become. In these districts, no one appears surprised. For years, the agreements have been negotiated and renegotiated, occasionally by board members who didn’t fully understand what they were signing. It is structural, not personal, secrecy. It’s the breathing mechanism of the system. These contracts must already be posted online in Illinois, Indiana, and Texas. Arizona doesn’t, and silence is preferred by inertia.
There’s a feeling, watching this unfold, that something will eventually break the pattern — a viral local news story, an aggressive school board candidate, a state legislator with time on their hands. Until then, the highest-paid public employees in many Arizona counties will continue to live well, quietly, on the public’s tab. Most taxpayers will never know the full number. That, more than the number itself, is the part that should sting.
