Leaders of some local charter school organizations made more money than superintendents of California’s largest school districts in 2016, the most recent year for which all of their salary information is available.

One of those charter organizations was Inspire Charter Schools, which paid its CEO Nick Nichols $514,197 that year, according to an IRS filing.

Inspire is a home school charter network that enrolled at least 23,300 students in nine schools this past fall. Inspire students typically learn from home or online.


Another top payer was Learn4Life, a charter school network with about 44,000 students that says it serves some of California’s most disadvantaged youth, including low income students, refugee students and high school dropouts. Learn4Life was recently ordered to shut down some of its locations because it violated a state law based on where it located its learning centers.

The parent corporation for Learn4Life charter schools, Lifelong Learning Administration, paid five executives more than $300,000 in 2016, according to its IRS filing.

Lifelong Learning’s previous CEO, the now-retired founder Dante Simi, was paid $630,920, including severance pay and a settlement for an undisclosed claim, according to Learn4Life’s attorney Greg Bordo.

The current Lifelong Learning CEO, Skip Hansen, made $374,374 in 2016, according to the organization’s IRS filing. Hansen is Simi’s son-in-law.


The leader of High Tech High charter schools, which serve about 5,400 students and has been lauded for an innovative education approach, was also highly-paid. High Tech High CEO Larry Rosenstock made $351,092 in 2016. Rosenstock did not respond to a request for comment.

Charter schools are independently run but still funded with taxpayer dollars like traditional school districts are.

Nichols, Hansen, Simi and Rosenstock are among a handful of charter school leaders who made more money than the superintendents of California’s largest school districts.


They appear to be outliers when compared to other charter school leaders in San Diego County, many of whom were paid less than $200,000 in 2016, according to IRS filings.

Charter school advocates have argued that charter leaders are essentially like business start-up CEOs and have to focus on more tasks that school district superintendents get help for, such as marketing, acquiring facilities or drawing investors.

Superintendent Cindy Marten of San Diego Unified, the state’s second-largest district with roughly 103,000 students and 180 schools, was paid $281,167 in 2016, according to Transparent California. Only one San Diego County school district superintendent made more than $300,000 that year: Kevin Holt, superintendent of San Marcos Unified, who was paid $359,485.

Michelle King, the 2016 superintendent of Los Angeles Unified, the state’s largest district with more than 453,000 district students, made $345,784.


Nichols was paid so much in 2016 partly because he was getting compensated for previous years of receiving a lower salary during Inspire’s first years of operation, said Jayne Gray, president of the board of directors for the Inspire district office, in a statement.

Charter schools often have little money available when they first start out because they can only begin to collect state funding after they enroll students. Therefore Nichols was only paid a yearly salary of $35,000 when he helped launch Inspire in 2014, Gray said.

Still, Nichols’ annual salary averages out to be roughly $380,000 for the five years he has been CEO of Inspire, according to Gray. Nichols also earns a 7.5% doctoral stipend.

The Inspire board set Nichols’ salary based on comparable salaries of CEOs of Los Angeles-area nonprofits.


“It was very important to the Board of Directors that, not only should compensation for the CEO position be commensurate with similar positions, but that Dr. Nichols specifically be reimbursed for previous underpayment,” Gray said.

Bordo, Learn4Life’s attorney, pointed out that school district superintendents are also paid high salaries.

At least two dozen traditional public school district superintendents were paid more than $300,000 in 2016, according to Transparent California. Oakland Unified’s then-superintendent, Antwan Dewayne Wilson, was among the highest paid, making , $545,973, according to Transparent California data

Hard to find


Charter school leadership pay tends to get less attention than traditional school district leaders’ pay because charter school pay data are not as readily available.

Some pay data can be found by looking up a charter school organization’s 990 form, a form that nonprofits file yearly with the IRS. The most recent 990 forms available for many charter schools are three years old, and 990s for some charters can be hard to find, since some file under parent corporations with names that are different from the names of the schools.

Members of the public typically have to file public record requests to charter schools to get their current pay data. But some charter schools post no contact information or names of board members or administrators on their websites, making it difficult to file a public record request.

Several charter schools, including Inspire and Learn4Life schools, have historically not posted board agendas, minutes or meeting schedules on their websites.


One of the most commonly used sources of public employee pay data is Transparent California, a nonprofit that files public records requests to publish pay data from hundreds of, but not all of, California’s roughly 1,000 K-12 school districts.

The nonprofit publishes much less charter school pay data; for example, it publishes pay data from a dozen San Diego County charter schools, most of which covered only 2013.

Robert Fellner, executive director of Transparent California, said the nonprofit’s limited resources, which depend on donations, force the nonprofit to focus its work “on the traditional forms of government most members of the public seem to be interested in.”

Fellner said it has been difficult to get pay data from several charter schools.


“Our efforts at obtaining charter school data have been made more difficult because many believed the [California Public Records Act] did not apply to them,” Fellner said in an email. “Additionally, they are much less likely to be accessible or aware of their CPRA-obligations when compared to traditional government agencies.”