Los Angeles School Board Gets 174% Raise; Schools Still Among Worst In The Country

According to the LA Times, an “obscure city commission” just approved members of the Los Angeles Board of Education a whopping 174% raise, increasing their salary from $45,637 to $125,000.

This makes them some of the highest paid education board members in the country.

Additionally, part-time board members, who already earn a salary or receive compensation from elsewhere, will also get a pay bump from $26,437 to $50,000—a relatively modest increase of just 89%.

These raises were voted on, and approved unanimously by the seven-member LAUSD Board of Education Compensation Review Committee, who sets the compensation package for the Board every 5 years.

The reason for the raise? The Committee wanted to push board members’ salaries closer to the $191,000 a year that elected city councilors make.

Of course, actual teachers salaries pale in comparison to those of the bureaucrats. According to the LA Times:

For comparison, a first-year teacher currently earns at least $50,368. The average teacher salary is $75,350. The range for a principal’s salary is $83,000 to $138,000. L.A. schools Supt. Michelle King receives $350,000 a year. A board member’s chief of staff can earn up to $119,000 a year.

This massive wage increase will no doubt send shock waves throughout the education sector statewide, likely increasing pressure on other city councils to give egregiously large pay increases to their own board members.

This may also trigger increased wages for teachers, who have been lobbying for raises—with the support of many state legislators.

But realistically, California cannot afford to pay its teachers much more, since the state already pays billions to educate its massive illegal population. In fact, 1 in 5 students in California is an illegal immigrant or anchor baby, and they cost the state $17.4 billion to educate.

Also, California’s teachers (and board members) probably don’t deserve massive raises, certainly not in the neighborhood of 174%, since their education system is ranked 37th out of the 50 states in the country.

If Los Angeles or California really wanted to improve their education system, they would start by fighting back against illegal immigration, since they already have some of the most crowded classrooms in the country.