Superintendent Salvador Cavazos is one of the highest-paid superintendents in the nation
AUSTIN, Texas – Yesterday, The Texas Tribune and ProPublica’s joint investigative unit released a new report on a Texas charter school superintendent who takes home up to $870,000 a year to run just three campuses in Austin, Corpus Christi, and Brownsville. The report states that this amount is seemingly the most pay for any school that receives state funding in Texas and one of the highest in the nation. Reporters also found that members of the charter school’s private, unelected board have voted to give the superintendent additional pay or benefits in 14 or their last 24 meetings since 2021.
HIGHLIGHTS
- “Valere Public Schools Superintendent Salvador Cavazos’ compensation to run three campuses in Austin, Corpus Christi and Brownsville exceeds the less than $450,000 that New York City’s chancellor makes to run the largest school system in the country.”
- “Texas school districts must post all compensation and benefits provided to their superintendent online or in public annual reports, according to rules set by the Texas Education Agency. They must also report superintendents’ salaries and any supplemental pay for extra duties to the state. But Valere excluded more than a dozen bonuses and additional payments it awarded Cavazos, some of which its board granted to him in perpetuity.”
- “Board members said that they did not believe the district had run afoul of any state reporting requirements because no one from the state had told them that they had.”
- “Valere’s student performance on state exams also lags behind statewide averages, data shows…Last year, Valere teachers left at a higher rate than in most schools across the state.”
Read the full story below:
Texas Tribune/ProPublica: This charter school superintendent makes $870,000. He leads a district with 1,000 students.
[Ellis Simani, ProPublica, and Lexi Churchill, The Texas Tribune/ProPublica, 3/6/25]