A reader reached out after seeing my Wayne County superintendent pay comparison and asked a rather simple question:
WHAT DOES SUPERINTENDENT PAY LOOK LIKE ACROSS KENT COUNTY?
Well.
You know what happens when someone hands Lady Budgetdown a question and there are public records involved.
Out come the spectacles.
Out comes the abacus.
And down the rabbit hole we go. 🧐
So I pulled the publicly posted compensation reports for all 20 traditional public school districts in Kent County. No charters and no ISD, and paired them with each district's 2024–25 pupil FTE from Michigan's Bulletin 1014.
And because districts apparently cannot agree on what to call a wage, I did NOT force these numbers into one convenient label.
If the district called it Medicare Wages, that's what you see.
If it called it W-2 Medicare Wages, that's what you see.
If it called it Total Salary, Total Wages, or simply Wage, that's what you see.
THE TERMINOLOGY BELONGS TO THE DISTRICT.
THE NUMBERS BELONG TO THE DISTRICT.
I'M JUST PUTTING THE RECEIPTS NEXT TO EACH OTHER. 🧾
I also included assistant, associate and deputy superintendents when the district reported employees under those titles.
A few housekeeping notes before someone reaches for the smelling salts:
📌 Byron Center and Kelloggsville: the reports available for this comparison are from 2024.
📌 Kenowa Hills: the newest compensation report I found posted was from 2020. Rather than mix five-year-old wages into a current comparison, I left those wage figures blank and told you exactly why.
📌 Thornapple Kellogg: its report identifies a partial-year superintendent and an interim superintendent, so both are shown exactly that way.
📌 Godwin Heights: its report contains multiple superintendent-level entries. Again, I didn't decide who "counts." I showed you what the district reported.
And remember: pupil FTE is included for CONTEXT. Enrollment alone does not determine what a superintendent should be paid. Districts differ in staffing, programs, responsibilities, finances and organizational structure.
But putting enrollment and reported wages side by side gives taxpayers something useful:
PERSPECTIVE.
Twenty districts.
One county.
Same public question.
No rankings. No declaration of who is "overpaid." No magic number telling you what a superintendent should earn.
Just the receipts.
And sometimes, dearest reader, seeing all the receipts on the same table is where the interesting questions begin. 🧐🧾
With receipts and respect,
Lady Budgetdown
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