In an earlier story. We had made a comment that $82,000 could pay for two Park City teachers. A reader commented that it was more like one teacher, due to benefits. We weren’t really sure what Park City School District personnel made, so we checked out Utah’s Right to Know website, which shows government employee salaries.
The table below lists gross compensation (salary plus benefits) for all Park City School District personnel in 2015.
We made the decision not to list employee names and instead just provide their position. Each line in the table below represents an employee. Their gross compensation is salary plus benefits. Generally it seems that 30%-35% of the gross compensation are benefits. So, if you see gross compensation of $100,000 it is likely that their salary is about $67,000 and benefits are about $33,000.
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Update (1/6/2017):
We received some feedback questioning the numbers above. Some government employees reported that Utah Right to Know numbers appeared inflated. We reached out to the State of Utah to better understand the numbers.
We added a new post called Accuracy of posted Park City teacher salaries that provides the State of Utah feedback and a description of why government employees may feel that numbers are inflated.
However, for clarity in this article, you should know that BENEFITS here include benefits that employees may not directly see in the form of cash. It may include money like FICA tax paid by the district, health care expenses paid by the district, etc. We believe that generally the Gross Compensation numbers are accurate per the numbers reported by the Park City School District to the State of Utah. This is the amount of money the school district is paying in a year for an employee. However, these numbers are made up of salary, benefits the employee sees, and benefits paid by the school district that the employee may not directly see.
6 comments
Yup, not as cheap as you thought. The actual budget is an interesting read as well, and worth posting sometime just so people can see where the money goes.
Also, how the heck does a substitute make $130k?!? That one sticks out!
The Utah Rights to Know numbers are notoriously misleading. I think it has something to do with the reported number that URTK uses being some sort of base that maybe a maximum conceivable compensation. I work at the University of Utah earning $97k per year. With benefits, it is about $135k. However, if I look myself up on URTK, my salary+benefits shows up as $224k! I only wish…
Either way, be careful drawing conclusions from the Utah’s Right to Know web site.
Still, any amount is too much for a curriculum director who chooses to replace a check mark (to designate correct) with a smiling face, and to replace an X (to designate wrong) with a check mark.
These numbers are crazy misleading. I understand wanting to post employee salaries (and as a teacher, I’m totally cool with it. Post my salary if you want, doesn’t bother me). But how about some journalistic effort and cross-check the numbers you’re posting with the real numbers? I’m sure a group of teachers would be willing to offer their actual salary and benefits – we get those every year in itemized print out, we know how much we make and our benefits. These numbers are totally inflated. If you want pure salary numbers, you can look at the salary schedule too; it would offer another perspective, even if it means that you cannot know the exact salary of each employee.
Thanks for the comment. We have verified a few numbers with teachers in Park City. However, we have no idea whether the other 99% of salaries match.
Please be aware that these numbers come from the State of Utah. They are submitted by the Park City School District to the State of Utah. We are not likely to fact check official numbers from the State of Utah.
That said, we have reached out to the Utah department who handles this to better understand whether they manipulate the numbers given by the local organization and what could be the cause of any discrepancies.
We would guess the answer is that the state reports what they receive. We will let people know what we find out.