How much money do MCSD employees earn? Search this database for their salaries
The Ledger-Enquirer has compiled a searchable database that lists the salaries for employees of the Muscogee County School District.
It includes the annual approved salaries as of Dec. 16. School district salaries are public information and can be obtained through a request under the Georgia Open Records Act.
The database comprises salaries for 5,172 employees (5,157 last year), including part-time. Among them, 4,241 (4,300 last year) are listed as receiving annual salaries, with the rest paid daily or hourly.
The average of those annual salaries is $44,500.84 ($44,373.52 last year). But to filter out the effect of outliers (extremely high or low salaries), a better way to compare the school district salaries to the typical resident of Muscogee County is to use the median salary.
That’s the figure at the midpoint of the range, which in MCSD is a low of $8,537.60 for a cashier working four hours per day ($8,487.80 last year) and a high of $186,000 for the superintendent (same as last year) before his raise in December to $203,000.
So the median of those salaries is $43,513 (the same as last year).
The median household income for Muscogee County is $46,408, and per-person income is $26,097, according to 2019 U.S. Census estimates, the latest year available. Over the same period, Georgia’s per-person income was $31,067, and the median household income was $58,700. In the United States, per-person income was $34,103, and the median household income was $62,843.
Further filtering the MCSD database to exclude the part-time employees and bus drivers, the lowest salary is $14,400.10 for a parent mentor ($15,480 last year for an elementary school clerk), the average salary remains $48,154.94 ($48,666.79 last year), but the median salary increases to $47,146 ($47,437 last year).
All MCSD salaries are in the database linked to this story. Seventy-four of them (the same number as last year) earn at least $100,000 per year. The top dozen are:
- David Lewis, superintendent, $186,000
- Alan Harkness, director of Columbus Public Library (owned and operated by MCSD), $139,309.56
- Terry Baker, chief west region officer, $133,465.76
- Ronald Pleasant, chief information officer, $133,465.76
- Keith Seifert, chief academic officer, $133,465.76
- Ronald Wiggins, chief east region officer, $133,465.76
- Angela Vickers-Ward, chief student services officer, $129,097
- Marvin Crumbs, principal of Columbus High School, $127,267
- Johnny Freeman, principal of Spencer High School, $127,267
- Sureya Hendrick, principal of Shaw High School, $127,267
- Alonzo James, principal of Kendrick High School, $127,267
- Arleska Castillo, chief human resources officer, $127,074.
Note: The MCSD board unanimously voted in December to give Lewis a 9% raise, increasing his salary from $186,000 to $203,000.
At the same meeting, the board unanimously approved salary increases for all classified personnel, meaning employees in positions that don’t require teaching or other professional certification. The raises were 3.5%. The salary schedule for all MCSD bus drivers were raised based on an entry-level rate increasing from $14.95 to $17.25 per hour.
Thursday, the Georgia Senate approved an amended mid-year budget that includes $2,000 bonuses to teachers and $1,000 bonuses to other K-12 workers, such as school bus drivers, part-time employees and cafeteria workers. The bill goes to the Georgia House for approval before Gov. Brian Kemp can sign it.
You can find the interactive MCSD salaries database at the end of this story. Use the categories to search for a specific person, job title or salary, or click “search” to view the entire database in alphabetical order.
Want to view salaries by lowest to highest or vice versa? Click “search” then “annual pay.” Discover more by clicking each column header.
This story was originally published March 8, 2022 at 12:00 AM.
