INDIANAPOLIS —  

 Indiana lawmakers who changed the way the state’s public school teachers are paid are now turning their attention to how top school administrators are compensated.

The pay and benefit packages of the state’s 291 school superintendents will come under scrutiny this summer by a legislative study committee also charged with looking at a plan to cap superintendents’ salaries and limit their perks.

In doing so, Indiana joins a growing number of states, including Illinois, New Jersey, and New York, taking a closer look at how local school boards use taxpayer dollars to compensate school superintendents. Those states are exploring or employing several options, from capping salaries at or below what the governor makes to linking salaries to district size.

Whether local school boards in Indiana — under pressure to cut costs due to declining state revenues — will welcome the state’s intervention remains to be seen.

“Some may see it as a blessing and some will see it as a curse,” said state Rep. Robert Behning, the influential Republican chairman of the House Education Committee. “Nobody likes to have their ability to determine their destiny taken over by another body.”

Behning and other state legislators who pushed for the compensation review note that Indiana spent more than $32.9 million on superintendent salaries last school year. That doesn’t include benefits and other perks like housing and car allowances.

Those legislators are unhappy about a $1 million retirement package that a township school board in Indianapolis negotiated with its superintendent before he retired last December.

But they also contend that compensation packages offered to superintendents by local school boards across the state — including salaries ranging from $29,000 to $272,000 — are arbitrary and have little correlation to the size of the school districts or the success of their students.

“It’s out of control,” said State Sen. Jim Banks, a freshman Republican from Columbia City who pushed for the compensation review during the legislative session that ended in April.

Banks backed a House bill that would have established a pay-for-performance plan for school administrators that would have mirrored, in part, the merit pay plan that legislators passed for teachers.

The bill failed in the Senate. But the issue of superintendents’ pay was revived in early June by legislative leaders who assigned the topic to the bipartisan Interim Study Committee on Education Issues.

That committee, scheduled to meet this summer, was also instructed to look into establishing a statewide salary structure for superintendents based on the number of students enrolled in their school districts.

John Ellis, executive director of the Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents, opposes the idea of linking pay to district enrollment.

“It’s such a ridiculous concept,” Ellis said. “Indiana (superintendent) salaries are not out of line.”

He argues that most Indiana school superintendents are overworked and underpaid, noting that a study conducted two years ago showed that Indiana’s superintendent salaries were among the lowest in the nation.

But he acknowledges that the salaries are uneven. Superintendent salary figures kept by the Indiana Department of Education show pay ranges widely, with little correlation to district size, complexity of the student body, or a community’s cost of living.

Among the examples cited by compensation review supporters: A school board in Clark County decided two years ago to pay its superintendent a salary of $225,000 to run a district with 10,700 students. In a neighboring school district in Floyd County, the superintendent is paid $160,900 to run a district with 11,600 students. The state’s smallest school district, with 169 students, paid its superintendent $98,820 last year. Noblesville, with more than 9,000 students, paid its superintendent a $75,862 salary last year.

Ellis said the difference is due to the market for good superintendents who can command higher salaries, and local school boards’ desire to hang on to those superintendents.

Keeping their superintendent is why the board of the Wayne Township Schools in Indianapolis said they were willing to renegotiate their superintendent’s contract back in 2007, giving him a retirement package worth more than $1 million.

The revelation of the contract’s details late last year sparked outrage among local residents and lawmakers.

Ellis said the Wayne Township situation was an isolated incident. Banks and Behning aren’t so sure.

“There needs to be more transparency in what’s in these contracts,” Behning said, noting that school boards are not required to report to the state DOE the other perks, beyond salaries, offered to superintendents.

Both sides agree that control is at the heart of the debate.

Ellis objects to the legislature’s intrusion into what he sees as an issue of local control by school boards, and their historic right to set compensation levels for their top administrators.

“These are decisions best made at the local level,” Ellis said.

Banks and Behning argue that more guidance is needed from state lawmakers who intentionally shifted education funding away from local property taxes three years ago, when the legislature passed property tax caps. In doing so, the legislature also opted to fund local school districts’ operating expenses — including superintendent salaries — out of the state’s general fund.

That shift, said Banks, means “state legislators have a responsibility to exert more control over state dollars.”

Indiana isn’t the only state looking at how local school boards use taxpayer dollars to compensate school superintendents.

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, a Democrat, has proposed the formation of a commission to examine reducing the amount of state dollars spent on superintendent salaries by reducing the number of school districts through consolidation. Quinn’s staff said reducing the number of school districts from 869 to 350 would save the state $100 million on district superintendent salaries.

In New Jersey, two successive governors tried to contain the growth of pay and benefits of the state’s 600-plus school superintendents — half of whom earn salaries greater than Gov. Chris Christie’s annual pay of $175,000. Christie, a Republican, has put in place salary caps on schools administrators based on district enrollment.

In New York, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo has proposed putting a cap on school superintendent salaries outside New York City, ranging from $125,000 to $179,000, depending on the size of the school district. The superintendent of the New York City’s schools, with one million students, earns $250,000.

— Maureen Hayden is statehouse bureau chief for CNHI Indiana newspapers. She may be reached by e-mailing to maureen.hayden@indianamediagroup.com.

By the numbers

(These figures represent base salaries only and do not include bonuses, perks, or other means of compensation.)

Avon Community School Corporation

Base salary: $160,186, Enrollment: 8498

Brownsburg Community School Corporation

Base salary: $150,000, Enrollment: 7548

Danville Community School Corporation

Base salary: $118,000, Enrollment: 2598

Mill Creek Community School Corporation

Base salary: $105,000, Enrollment: 1631

North West Hendricks School Corporation

Base salary: $105,000, Enrollment: 1904

Plainfield Community School Corporation

Base salary: $147,288, Enrollment: 4808

* Information provided by the Indiana Department of Education