On Monday, March 24, a story appeared in Newsday regarding compensation for Long Island School Administrators. This story included a table on Page A14 which indicated that the Massapequa Public Schools had 59 administrators with salaries over $110,000 during 2007/08. The table also indicated the district's enrollment for 2006/07 and the ratio of students to administrators in 2006/07.

At first glance it appeared that Massapequa had more administrators earning over $110,000 than any other school district in Nassau County. However, upon further review, we realized that Newsday had combined information from two separate and distinct sources and it is to this issue that I am writing.

The information found in the first two columns of the article was culled from a New York State Education Department database. This data is the direct result of scan forms that are completed each fall by every teacher and administrator in every public school district in New York State. It is interesting to note that the same NY State database that produces the first two columns of Newsday's information also includes the number of administrators that are employed by each district. Unfortunately, Newsday did not use this information to produce the third column in their table. Newsday's third column comes from another database that is generated from the fiscal disclosure statement that each district must include as part of the budget information it transmits to its residents. Unfortunately, as NY State notes, the data in that column is not well defined.

For example, there are school districts throughout New York State where administrators teach three or more classes a day. Are these staff members defined as teachers or administrators? In fact in some districts, chairpeople and deans are included in teacher bargaining units and are not listed as administrators. The only report that factually records the number of administrators in each district is the New York State report from which the data in the first two columns of this Newsday table was gleaned.

The report I'm citing can be found at http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/irts/pmf/2006-07/2007_Other-Staffing-Ratios.pdf. If you were to review this report for each school district in Nassau County, you would find that where Newsday reports 32 administrators there are actually 44. Where Newsday reports 39 there are actually 55. Where the table indicates 39 there are actually 56 and so on. However, in Massapequa where Newsday reported 59 there are actually 47.3 administrative assignments. It should also be noted that the same NY State Education Department report shows that Massapequa's ratio of students to administrators is 16 percent higher than the ratio of students to administrators throughout Nassau County and the ratio of students to Central Office administrators in Massapequa is almost 68 percent higher than the ratio in Nassau County.

The board of education was honest and provided our residents with full disclosure. Perhaps the Newsday article should have also provided comparative data from one NY State source and not two different ones. We hope and trust that you will bring this information to the attention of your readers and to all of the residents in Massapequa.

Charles V. Sulc,

Acting Superintendent of Schools