Income Inequality in New Orleans Charter Schools

By Beatrice Deslondes, Letter to the Editor

Many charter school and charter network leaders are earning upwards of $200,000 per year in a city with a median income of $38,721.

My survey of budget audits for 34 New Orleans charter schools for the 2017-2018 school year reveals:

Among charter networks, CEOs received an average salary of $190,743 while managing an average of 4 schools.
Among non-network schools, the average principal earned a base salary of $143,417.

The salary charts of the neighboring public school district of Jefferson Parish recommend that a principal earn up to 1.75 times a teacher’s salary. On average, leaders in New Orleans earned 2.96 times what teachers earned.

Most audits stopped including teacher salaries in 2017-2018, but audits for the two previous years reveal a trend of increasing inequality. Between the 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 school years:

Average teacher pay dropped nearly 1% at non-network schools ($50,644 to $49,768) and 0.2% at networks (from $51,005 to $50,640).
Average leader salaries increased nearly 9% at non-network schools (from $144,217 to $155,234) and over 20% at networks (from $156,828 to $176,329).

Teacher shortages are a problem in New Orleans. According to a Cowen Institute report, teachers in New Orleans with Master’s degrees and 5 years of experience would need to spend 44% of their income on rent alone.

Information about pay for paraprofessionals or co-teachers is lacking in the audits. The Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) lists salaries for “Aides” between $18,863 and $23,955.

The school workers who support students’ most critical needs—security, nutrition, and health—are among the worst paid. The OPSB pay scale permits paying nurses and security workers as little as $22,427, while nutrition workers can earn as little as $16,000.

A 2018 report by the United Way of Louisiana concluded that the minimum annual income required to support human life in New Orleans in 2016 was $19,548 for a single adult and $53,988 for a family of four.

Income inequality contributes to high turnover rates in the school system and economic instability in the communities it is obligated to serve. Pay transparency and living wages for all school employees should be required of all institutions receiving public funds.

Workers Voice Socialist Movement

We are workers, employed and unemployed, youth, students, and seniors. We are multi-racial and multi-national and organize for the unity of the working class. We are funded by and for workers, for the liberation of all workers and oppressed people.

We organize for jobs and higher wages, against racism, women’s, and LGBTQ oppression, and for solidarity with immigrants. We organize for community schools, lower rents, and food on our tables. We organize for workers’ power so that everything will one day be removed from the capitalists’ private ownership.

We oppose the Pentagon, which is looting our tax dollars and handing them over to war-profiteering private companies, while social programs are gutted. We oppose war for empire which is pursued only to lower our wages and plunder the world’s resources while destroying the environment. We reject the monopoly media who feed us lie after lie.

The labor of workers produces enormous wealth here in Louisiana, the U.S. and the world– so much wealth that everyone could have housing, meaningful jobs, education, healthcare, and genuine equality. But this wealth is stolen and privately owned by the capitalist class for their greed and profit. We believe that we, the workers of the world, can unite in revolution to overcome capitalism and build a better world.