Dearest readers, two different challengers recently brought Lady Budgetdown the same receipt, or so they believed.
The Mackinac Center's superintendent compensation database. They used Mackinac's figures to argue that River Rouge's superintendent compensation was not unusual.
Very well.
Lady Budgetdown did not choose a collection of districts designed to make River Rouge look better, or worse. She allowed the challengers' own source to choose the comparison group.
Mackinac selected the ten.
Then Lady Budgetdown visited each district's website individually and replaced Mackinac's outdated figures with the newest compensation report posted by that district.
And voilà. 🪶
River Rouge reported:
📌 W-2 Medicare wages: $483,314.38
📌 Retirement costs: $175,636.56
📌 Insurance: $28,295.63
📌 FICA/Medicare: $17,926.26
📌 Total reported compensation: $705,172.83
Among the ten districts Mackinac placed at the top of its database, River Rouge had both the highest current reported superintendent wages and the highest reported compensation package.
Detroit's disclosed package was second at $568,887, approximately $136,286 below River Rouge.
Now, an important quill-point:
This graphic does not claim that these are Michigan's current ten highest-paid superintendents. Mackinac's database is outdated, and other superintendents may now belong on a true statewide list.
That was not the question being tested.
The question was what would happen if I took the very comparison source readers used to challenge Lady Budgetdown, and checked its listed districts against current records.
So I did.
Mackinac selected the ten.
The districts supplied the current receipts.
And the ledger recorded exactly what those receipts showed.
Where a district's report omitted benefits or other compensation categories, the graphic says so. Receipts are only useful when we acknowledge what they contain, and what they do not.
With receipts and respect.
#LadyBudgetdown #WithReceiptsAndRespect #RiverRouge #MichiganSchools #SchoolTransparency #PublicSchoolFinance #TaxpayerTransparency #FollowTheReceipts #TheLedger