Those numbers seem large, but it represents only 578 of California’s 1,764 K-12 public school districts, charter schools and county offices of education. These 578 school agencies cover nearly 3.8 million of the approximately 6 million K-12 students enrolled in agencies throughout the state.
State law requires cities, counties and special districts to annually report compensation data to the Controller, but such statutory requirement exists for K-12 agencies. School districts voluntarily submitted the data that has been added to the website.
Controller John Chiang commended those 578 school agencies for supplying their pay data and he urged others to participate going forward.
“From Mulberry Elementary School in Imperial County with 23 employees, to the Los Angeles Unified School District with 91,007 employees, many of our state’s education leaders have embraced this transparency effort not out of legal compulsion, but out of a sense of civic duty to the community they serve,” Chiang said in a statement. “I am confident that the public’s right to know will ultimately prevail.”
The data now on http://publicpay.ca.gov is searchable by school district or entity, county, average and total wages, and more. The pay data doesn’t identify the wages of individuals by name, but it does list their position.
This staff report was originally published by Techwire, a sister publication to Government Technology that covers IT in California state and local government.