Here’s a list of Mississippi’s 50 highest-paid public officials. Many are superintendents.
The Mississippi Center for Public Policy released its annual report of the state’s 50 highest-paid officials in the public sector, and some of them make more than any governor in the U.S.
The “Fat Cat” report list includes the state medical examiner, the executive director of Medicaid and a host of school superintendents.
The highest salary on the list belonged to the State Superintendent of Public Education, who makes $300,000 a year. Superintendent Carey Wright retired June 30 and Kim Benton is the interim state superintendent.
The majority of the top executives hold state-level positions or have been employed by school districts in or near Jackson.
Earning $179,401 a year and ranking No. 28 on the list, Oxford’s city manager has the highest local government salary on the list.
The highest-paid Mississippi Coast official on the list (No. 19) is Harrison County School District Superintendent Mitchell King, with an annual salary of $190,304. King received a 19% pay increase since 2021, according to the report.
Here are the rest of the Coast employees in the top 50:
#22: Ocean Springs School District Superintendent Bonita Coleman, with an annual salary of $185,000, a 5% increase since 2021.
#27: Pascagoula Gautier School District Former Superintendent Wayne Rodolfich, with an annual salary of $180,300, a 6% increase since 2021.
#45: Gulfport School District Superintendent Glen East, with an annual salary of $165,000, a 10% increase since 2021.
The report falsely listed a Moss Point teacher aide salary as the 39th highest paid employee in the state with a reported salary of $170,000.
Moss Point Separate School District officials said that information was false. The district’s pay scale makes a salary that high an impossibility. The Moss Point superintendent’s salary is $142,398 per year, which kept it out of the top 50.
A look at superintendent pay
Because more than half of the state’s top salaries belong to school superintendents, the Mississippi Center for Public Policy compared school district performances to the salaries.
“In reviewing and ranking all of the superintendent salaries, we took three primary factors into account—the total student enrollment of the district, the MDE-provided rating of the school district, and the actual salary itself,” stated the report.
The organization came up with a quality points scale based on student enrollment and the MDE’s district rating or grade.
The majority of the school districts on the Coast were in the green, providing salaries that aligned with the district performance. Moss Point was an exception. The district has a D rating and a superintendent salary higher than nearby districts with A and B ratings.
With 3,026 quality points from the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, the report listed Moss Point’s cost per grade point at $47.06.
The area’s highest paid superintendent (King) also had the highest quality points in the area (68,330) and a student body of nearly 14,000. The report rated the cost per grade point for Harrison County at $2.79, the third lowest in the state.
This story was originally published August 30, 2022 at 6:30 AM.
