Wow, Fire Island
Fire Island Union Free School District enrolls 39 students. It has its own superintendent. He earned $235,277 in 2024.
That is $6,033 per pupil, paid before a single teacher, classroom, or textbook.
Suffolk County has 65 school districts. Each one employs its own superintendent. The ten smallest spend between $553 and $6,033 per student on the position alone.
For comparison, the New York City school system enrolls about 915,000 students, served by one chancellor. Chancellor David Banks earned $433,456 in fiscal 2024. That works out to less than half a cent per student. The Fire Island UFSD figure is more than a million times higher.
The thirteen smallest Suffolk districts together enroll about 2,000 students, fewer than William Floyd UFSD alone. They employ thirteen superintendents whose combined pay was approximately $3 million in 2024, before benefits.
Under New York State Education Law, the only way to merge a school district is a referendum approved by voters inside each affected district. The last two such mergers happened in 2013 and 2019, both in upstate counties of fewer than 60,000 people. Suffolk’s east end has not seen one in living memory.
Sixty-five separate organizational charts, 912 square miles.
AI-assisted, human-driven.