January 13, 2009
A REPORT ON MEMPHIS CITY SCHOOL SALARIES, JOB TITLES AND BENEFITS

After filing a law suit I finally got the Memphis City School schedule of job titles, names, salary ranges and partial benefit costs. As you may or may not know, the Memphis City School system is the biggest local cost for taxpayers and the biggest public employer. The schedule that I received was 1335 pages. Before filing this report I was asked by a School Board official to submit it to Dr. Cash for review. I did this but have received no reply for over a week. Therefore I am submitting this report to the public. School budget funding is under consideration and this is information that is relevant.

I have been going through this massive document and trying to make sense of it. I have attached two spreadsheets on which I have made a partial analysis. One shows the 312 job titles from A to Z and the other shows the job salary ranges high to low. I have not finished yet but I wanted to make publish this so that I could get some public comments and input. My partial spreadsheets covers only about 11600 employees but there are over 17000 employees working at the Memphis School System. This does not cover the Shelby County School System as I as still trying to get their information.

I have also attached some sample sheets out of the 1335 pages. You will see job codes, salary grades, salary ranges, the FICA cost, the retirement cost, the insurance cost, the unemployment cost, the job title and the employee name.

I would appreciate public comments from people who know more about this bureaucracy than I do but some things I wondered about and noted below.

• The school system pays 7.65% for social security and medicare and I presume the employees pay an equal amount. I assume that when they retire and reach medicare age, their state pension is reduced when they start receiving social security. As I understand it, other City and County employees pay only the medicare portion of social security which is 1.45%.
  
• The school system pays 6.2% for the retirement pension fund and I assume the employee pays a matching amount. The system as I understand it is run by the state of Tennessee as the Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System. This is a defined benefit pension plan.
  
• The medical insurance payment is substantial but it varies as a percentage of salaries. I assume this depends on whether the insurance is for the employee only or for a family. The difference can be as much as $6000 per employee. I do not know at this point how much the employee pays for this insurance but I will enquire about this.
  
• As I understand it, teachers work 10 months during the 12 month year. I am not sure about holidays, sick days, personal days or any other benefits but I will inquire.
  

In looking through the list I find lots of high priced employees with titles that make you wonder what it is they do. Also note that executive directors make more than directors. Then there are 174 librarians, 1014 custodial helpers, 1098 educational assistants and 228 professional school counselors. It should be noted that the custodial helpers work at a relatively low pay scale but they receive insurance coverage the cost of which in some cases is almost ¼ to 1/2 of their salary.

I did not find the name or salary of Dr. Kriner Cash but he has a base salary of $258,000 per year. I will continue to try to get further information on the Memphis School System and the Shelby County School System and let you, the taxpayers, know what it is that you are paying for to the combined tune of $1.5 billion dollars.

Click here to see a partial list of job titles listed alphabetically

Click here to see a partial list of job salary ranges, high to low

Click here to see a partial list of the 1335 pages in this salary, benefit and job title report