OAKLAND — When it comes to rewarding school administrators, Bay Area districts rank among the top in the state, according to a pay study released Tuesday by Transparent California.

Oakland Unified School District Superintendent Antwan Wilson, with an annual compensation package of just over $400,000, was the highest-paid K-12 public employee in the Bay Area and fourth highest in the state last year among the 314 districts that responded to the nonprofit think tank that runs a database of public sector compensation. At the same time, the Mountain View-Los Altos High School District had the highest overall average employee compensation in the state.

The survey, which crunched 2015 compensation data for more than 800,000 K-12 public employees in the state, was far-reaching but covered only a fraction of California’s approximately 1,000 school districts, said Robert Fellner, research director for Transparent California. It excludes districts with fewer than 1,000 students. And a number of school districts simply refused to respond to the group’s Public Records Act request, including high-paying Palo Alto Unified School District, where in 2014 more than 700 employees earned six-figure compensation.

Of the 460 K-12 superintendents on the list, the average total compensation was $213,511, according to the nonprofit.

Wilson’s total compensation package was $400,096 last year. By comparison, the superintendents of Ontario-Montclair, Poway Unified and Whittier Union districts, all in Southern California, held the top three spots, earning $516,573, $448,861 and $417,865, respectively.

The next largest pay packages for Bay Area public K-12 educators went to Livermore Valley Joint Unified Superintendent Kelly Bowers, who was paid $383,105 last year; San Francisco Unified Superintendent Richard Carranza, who made $378,536; West Contra Costa superintendent Bruce Harter, who made $352,417, Santa Clara County Office of Education superintendent Jon Gundry, who earned $347,165, and Oak Grove School District superintendent Jose Manzo, who received $345,250.

Oakland Unified spokesman John Sasaki said Wilson’s pay is actually lower than other superintendents across the state and the country.

“His compensation is public record as it was laid out in his contract from 2014,” Sasaki said. “Mr. Wilson has received no pay raises other than cost-of-living adjustments, and his pay is actually lower than other superintendents. His compensation package falls into the same arena as superintendents around the country, accepting that the cost of living here in the Bay Area is higher than in other regions.”

However, Kim Davis of the advocacy group Parents United for Public Schools said the district was paying Wilson too much.

“It’s excessive, given that we are nowhere near the largest district, either regionally or nationally, and our student enrollment has gone down,” she said.

Also, teachers are getting less than what was originally promised for pay hikes, as a result of this lower student enrollment, she said.

Other school districts said they were surprised by the survey’s results.

Oak Grove Superintendent Jose Manzo’s $345,250 compensation package made him the seventh-highest reported among Bay Area K-12 educators. He supervises a 10,360-student pre-K-8 school district.

“It’s a little surprising that he’s that high up compared to others,” Oak Grove school board President Dennis Hawkins said. “I don’t think we’ve done a comparability study since we hired Jose” in 2012.

Superintendents’ salaries weren’t the only eye openers in the survey. Termination payouts to Micaela Ochoa and Maribel Medina, who were fired by the Santa Clara County Office of Education last year, made them among the most highly compensated school employees in the Bay Area.

Former General Counsel Medina received $489,659. Ochoa, former chief business officer, received $429,545, and has sued the office over her termination. They received an additional year’s salary as part of severance or separation agreements, according to the nonprofit. Last year, Assembly Bill 215 capped severance packages for school superintendents to one year of salary. Previously, the cap was at a year and a half.

The survey found that the Mountain View-Los Altos High School District topped the state in overall average 2015 employee compensation — including salary, benefits and employer contributions to state pension systems — at $119,846 per employee. That, like all of the survey, includes administrators, teachers and support staff who earn more than $25,000 annually. That compares with the average employee compensations of East Side Union High ($103,162), Antioch Unified ($85,141), Oakland Unified ($83,875), West Contra Costa Unified ($78,785) and Mt. Diablo Unified ($78,287).

And it is more than what’s offered by Santa Clara County’s largest school district, San Jose Unified, which pays an average of $93,451 in salary, benefits and pension contributions, the equivalent of $8,235 per student. The district still hopes its parcel tax will maintain its barely two-thirds majority to pass, as votes continue to be counted, to increase teacher salaries.

“I do not think we are paying our staff too much,” San Jose Unified board President Teresa Castellanos said emphatically. Investing in employees, she said, is key to improving education. To attract and keep teachers, she added, “they have to be able to live in the Bay Area. We are in a housing crisis.”

In addition to Palo Alto, the list also excludes some large high school districts such as Fremont Union in Sunnyvale and Sequoia in Redwood City, as well as smaller districts such as Los Gatos, Moreland in San Jose, Portola Valley, Ravenswood in East Palo Alto and Menlo Park. The Alum Rock Union School District in San Jose has never responded to Transparent California’s requests in four years.

While technically government agencies are obligated to respond to records requests, it’s up to requesters to force that response. But, “we’re very, very reluctant to sue schools,” Fellner said.

For Transparent California’s ranking of 2015 school district salaries, go to http://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/all/2015/school-districts/. For its salary database, go to http://transparentcalifornia.com/.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story listed Oak Grove Superintendent Jose Manza as the fourth highest paid administrator in the Bay Area, based on incorrect information from Transparent California. He is seventh highest paid. A previous version of the story also incorrectly listed payments to two former employees of the Santa Clara County Office of Education, which initially incorrectly reported their compensation. Payments for Maribel Medina were $489,659 and for Micaela Ochoa were $429,545.