ALBANY (AP) -- A fiscally conservative think tank reported Wednesday that total spending on teacher and administrator salaries by school districts outside New York City increased 5 percent to $14 billion in the 2008-09 school year.
The Empire Center for New York State Policy said the $670 million increase from the previous year, determined from retirement system payroll numbers for New York teachers, showed an additional 5,022 school employees with six-figure salaries from a year earlier, increasing the total to 32,064.
"The reason we're doing this? New Yorkers have a right to know how their money is being spent," said Lise Bang-Jensen, spokeswoman for the Empire Center, part of the Manhattan Institute. "Five percent, given that this period includes a recession, that's a healthy increase."
The database included gross pay for 262,088 teachers and administrators, 8,501 more than a year earlier, including substitute teachers and other part-time employees.
It didn't include the cost to more than 700 school districts for pensions and health care, Bang-Jensen said. For state workers, that's almost another 45 percent, she said.
Carl Korn, spokesman for New York State United Teachers, said the median teacher's salary statewide was $62,332 for 2007-2008 school year, up 4.7 percent from the year before. That's typically someone with about 15 years' experience, he said.
"We're talking about a professional with a master's degree in their peak earning years," Korn said. "What those figures actually say is that most teachers are paid fairly, but many earn far less than what they would earn in the private sector."
Korn said the report comes from a group funded by the Manhattan Institute, whose board consists of wealthy Wall Street financiers. If they really want to help middle-class taxpayers and their families, he said they should advocate letting the public keep part of the state's stock transfer tax, some $16.2 billion collected last year, all of which was given back.
Separately, the United Federation of Teachers said Wednesday that as this semester begins, at least 1,236 classes in New York City's high schools are oversize, affecting nearly 47,000 students for part of their day.
The union said it would be filing a grievance this week, that the academic class limit is 34 students, and potential reasons for the growing problem include budget cuts to staffing and programs, phasing out some schools, concentrating students in fewer buildings and growing populations in some neighborhoods.
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