Principal turnover evident in salaries

Cheryl Burke is in her 15th year as principal of Richmond's Chimborazo Elementary School.

She's an anomaly.

Hers is a profession in which leaders tend to move from school to school, and the tougher the environment, the shorter the likely tenure.

At Chimborazo, 88 percent of the students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch — a leading national indicator of poverty — making the school the 15th poorest of the 276 public schools in the 20 localities in central Virginia.

While Burke is well-settled at Chimborazo, the leaders of many of the area's other chronically poor schools are not, and that fact is apparent when examining salaries for area school leaders.

According to data collected and analyzed by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, principals of the 25 least affluent public schools in central Virginia earn nearly $2,700 a year less than the average salary for all principals in the area, and they earn more than $9,000 a year less than the principals of the 25 most-affluent schools.

The public school principals in the database earn on average $87,206 a year.

The principals of the 25 schools with the highest rate of students receiving free or reduced-price lunch earn an average of $84,531 this year, based on salary information collected by the newspaper last fall and poverty figures reported by the Virginia Department of Education.

The principals of the 25 schools at the top of the list earn an average of $93,948.

With public school principal salaries generally based on tenure, the disparity means that the schools with the greatest social needs are often led by the people with the least experience.

Gail Connelly, the executive director of the National Association of Elementary School Principals, said that's a national trend, with the most challenging schools being the hardest to keep staffed.

And school conditions, she said, not money, were often the greatest factor in whether principals stayed in place.

"It takes at least three to five years (to see) change, to really implement change, to really determine the true impact," she said.

Burke found that out on her own.

"When I got here, I thought I could change everything in a year," she said. "But it takes time. I've been physically threatened every way you can imagine and called every name you can think of."

She said she had to learn what her community was before deciding what it needed.

It took her four years before she was comfortable enough to move her sons from Ginter Park Elementary, where she had been assistant principal, to Chimborazo. And she lives close enough to her school that she can walk to work.

"It was rough here for a long time," she said. "We've had our challenges."

Not long after she began conquering those challenges, she said, she started getting offers to move to other schools. She said she could have earned more, and had fewer headaches, elsewhere.

"But I can make a difference here," she said. "I have made a difference."

During story time in pre-kindergarten class last week, Burke held in her lap a student from a Fulton Hill family that has had students at Chimborazo all 15 years she has been there.

"That wouldn't have been possible back then," she said of holding the boy. "This is about relationships. In 15 years, you get to know people. I have a lot of second-generation students coming through now."

If Burke had moved on years ago, it hardly would have been noticed. Connelly said she had seen research showing that up to 60 percent of principals in some places give up their jobs within three years, with up to 40 percent leaving the profession entirely.

Comfort and security are in the suburbs, not the inner city.

Six of the top seven highest-paid principals in the region work in Henrico County schools. The district fights a perception in eastern Henrico, where there is a strong African-American presence, that there is an unequal distribution of resources. Of the six principals at the top of the list, five lead schools in western Henrico.

"A large part of that is attributed to the years of service," said Henrico School Board member Lamont Bagby. "Retention is the underlying challenge. I believe compensation and support from district leadership are critical."

Bagby was an ardent supporter of the district using a $16.4 million federal grant in an incentive-pay pilot program at eight eastern Henrico schools to help retain the teachers at those schools.

Because principals typically rise through the teaching ranks to become administrators, early-career retention efforts would be a way to ensure that school systems have leadership candidates familiar with their schools.

Bagby calls it a "nontraditional effort to compensate instructional staff that elects to work in schools with significant challenges associated with socio-economics."

Connelly said her group was lobbing Congress to find ways to better train principals, too. Mentoring, she said, was the key.

"The better and more powerful the mentoring," she said, "the more likely (principals) are to stay on the job."

Of the 25 poorest schools, 19 are in Richmond, three are in Petersburg, and one each is in Chesterfield, Henrico and Sussex counties. On the other side, Henrico has 12 of the 25 most affluent schools, followed by Chesterfield with seven and Hanover six. Richmond's most affluent school is Mary Munford Elementary, which is 34th on the list.

Of the 37 principals listed with salaries of $100,000 or more, only one — Rosalind Taylor at Woodville Elementary — is in one of the 25 poorest schools. Five of the highest earners, including the area's top-earning principal — Regina Schwab, who earns $126,270 at Shady Grove Elementary in Henrico — work at top 25 schools.

Hanover County, one of the most affluent localities in the region, has the highest average pay for its principals, at $96,442. Henrico is second at $93,988.

The lowest-paying jobs are in the area's smallest school systems, with the three-school district in Charles City County paying an average salary of $69,944. Petersburg comes in second to last at $71,013.

Burke, in her 15th year, earns more than most of her peers who lead schools that serve the area's poorest children, but few of them have reached her tenure — or are likely to.

"I could have made more money elsewhere. But I have all the riches I need here and here," she said, pointing to her head and to her heart.