Six-figure earners multiply at PPS, while Black employee paychecks lag behind

Salaries continue to rise at the cash-strapped Pittsburgh Public Schools district, where the number of employees taking home over $100,000 has shot up by nearly a quarter in a single academic year. Still, wage gaps between Black and white employees persist.

PublicSource’s third annual analysis of payroll data in Pittsburgh Public Schools shows that the district paid $292 million in salaries and overtime in 2023, an increase of $15 million from the previous year.

The median income for the district’s 4,346 salaried and non-salaried employees was about $68,330. Of those, 1,368 employees made more than $100,000, a 22% increase from 2022.

Spending on teacher salaries, a significant chunk of total employee earnings, increased by 4%. The district employed 2,170 teaching professionals in 2023, a slight decrease from the previous year. The teaching staff, which includes pre-K, day-to-day substitutes and hourly adjunct teachers, were paid a total of $169.3 million.

District CFO Ron Joseph said the rise in personnel spending is driven largely by board-approved contacts and the salary schedule in the collective bargaining agreement between the district and the teacher’s union.

Highest earners

Superintendent Wayne Walters received the highest salary in the district, taking home $283,250 in base pay, almost double the rate of his deputies and highest-earning principals. Several employees from the maintenance and administration departments received the next top salaries in the district.

Kyle Vogt, a general foreman in the operations department, followed Walters by earning $177,170, of which $87,924 was overtime pay. Several central office employees were paid up to $168,000.

PPS paid about $17.4 million in overtime and supplemental pay in 2023, mirroring the trend of increasing supplemental pay from the previous year. To receive supplemental pay, an employee must be exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act. The pay is usually provided for employment categories such as teachers and school principals. Non-exempt employees such as paraprofessionals, secretarial clerks or custodians are eligible to receive overtime pay for additional work based on hourly rates.

Search the table below to learn how much PPS employees earned in 2023.

Black pay gaps

PPS employs a relatively small share of Black teachers and staff, and their average salaries skew well below the district’s white employees.

On average, Black men in PPS, excluding substitutes, hourly temporary staff and athletic coaches, earned $21,300 less than white employees in 2023. Black women, meanwhile, earned about $20,170 less than white women on average.

In an email response, district spokesperson Ebony Pugh said the disparity exists because more Black people are employed at lower-paying positions such as paraprofessionals and food service workers.

The district’s teaching staff is 86% white. PPS serves 18,380 students, of which 51% are Black.

Among teaching staff, Black women earned $1,315 more than white female teachers. Black men in teaching roles earned $2,430 less than white men on average.

Six PPS schools have staff that is more than half Black. No PPS school has a majority of Black teachers.

Teacher raises

PPS employed 1,955 pre-K and K-12 teachers, excluding day-to-day substitutes, last year. Of those, 36% of teachers earned between $100,000 and $110,000, up from 30% earning that salary range in 2022.

Kenneth Wright, a teacher from UPrep Milliones 6-12, made the highest earnings among all teachers at $146,318, of which $42,419 was supplemental pay. Eight teachers were paid between $130,000 and $140,000, and 42 teachers were paid over $120,000.

Most teachers who made more than $120,000 received supplemental pay.

Joseph said additional responsibilities such as coaching activities or teaching in summer credit recovery programs account for increased supplemental pay. Much of the overtime pay was a result of increasing resignations and vacancies in various positions, compelling others to pick up extra hours, he added.

While there were no furloughs among teachers, 46 staff members across PPS were displaced this year. Pugh said all displaced staff have secured assignments for the upcoming school year or have retired.

Joseph said the human resources department determines teacher displacement after it receives site-based budgets from school principals and calculates the number of teachers needed in each school.

“Displacement just means you do not currently have a place for the upcoming year, that doesn't necessarily mean that that person will be without a job,” he said.

The district employed 53 full-time substitute teachers in 2023, 18 more than in 2022. Full-time substitutes earned an average of $30,245. CAPA 6-12 is the only school that employs hourly and salaried adjunct teachers, who earned an average of $37,664.

Joseph said PPS may see a district-wide reduction in staffing based on fluctuations in student enrollment in different schools.

William Hileman, president of the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers [PFT], said the union will work with the district as it faces budget pressures and ensure that the district is efficiently spending money in a way that does not require staffing reductions.

Staffed by the suburbs

Teachers in the district are not required to live within the city, unlike other staff such as para-professionals, custodians and food service workers.

• 15% of PPS teachers live in ZIP codes that are entirely within the city.
• 30% of teachers live in ZIP codes that cross city boundaries, so city residency is unclear.
• 56% of teachers live outside the city.

Siloed seniority

Full-time teachers in PPS have an average teaching experience of 16 years in the district.

Whittier K-5 has the most experienced teachers in the district, with an average tenure of 22 years. Teachers at UPrep Milliones and Arlington K-8 have an average teaching experience of nine years in the district, the lowest among all schools.

The least experienced teaching staff tend to be the lowest paid. Full-time teachers at Arlington K-8, where teachers average nine years with the district, were paid an average salary of $73,902. At Brookline K-8 and Roosevelt K-5, the average teacher experience was over 20 years and average pay above $100,000.

The district is facing difficulties in teacher retention, according to Pugh, mirroring a nationwide shortage of teachers, and fewer teachers of color are entering teaching certification programs.

To retain teachers in hard-to-staff schools, Hileman said, PPS needs to improve working conditions for educators by effectively responding to student misconduct and reducing workload.

Pugh said PPS and PFT provided financial incentives up to $12,000 to retain teachers in schools with high turnover rates.

The program has not been successful, according to Pugh. Currently, the district has about 186 vacancies, of which 61 are teaching positions. Pugh said the district is reevaluating other strategies to retain teaching staff but declined to provide details.

“[Vacancies are] something that was exacerbated by the pandemic and continues to be pervasive in terms of the workforce shortages that we have,” Joseph said.

Lajja Mistry is the K-12 education reporter at PublicSource. She can be reached at lajja@publicsource.org .

This story was fact-checked by Cionna Sharpe.

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