Oceanside Unified 2023 Compensation Analysis
The following analysis is derived using data available from various sources as listed on my “References/Data Sources” page.
See my “Methodology” page for a description of the methodology used.
This current version was updated August 21st, 2024.
If anyone has any issue with the data or analysis, I’d welcome that discussion – I’d like to make sure my data is as accurate as possible, if you see something, say something! You’re welcome to email me at info@sandiegoschools.net.
Analysis
This analysis is based on compensation data reported by Oceanside Unified, obtained using a legal California Public Records Act request and posted on the Transparent California website.
For this purpose our analysis covers a ten-year period starting in 2014 and ending in 2023.
All Full-Time Employees
In 2023, the average total pay only of 1461 full-time OUSD employees was $87,846/year. This does not include compensation in the form of benefits.
The average wage of a San Diego County resident, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, was $78,240. This means the average OUSD employee made $9,606 (12.28%) more. Of course this does not compare “like for like” skill levels or experience, it is just an overall average.
As outlined in the methodology, I prefer using medians to characterize a population, but here I’m using averages to match with the averages provided by the US BLS.
Including the cost of benefits, the average actual total compensation of this group was $120,845/year.
In 2014 average total pay for this group (1633 employees) was $61,140. Comparing that to latest data (2023) shows an increase of $26,706 (43.68%) with average annual growth of 4.11%/year.
During this time, the California Department of Industrial Relations reports inflation in San Diego County averaged 3.52%/year, meaning wage growth in OSUD exceeded growth in the county by about 17% (1.17 times greater.)
Looking at overall average pay growth can be deceptive, however, given the mix of employees can change over time. For instance, at the beginning of this period the employee pool may have contained a larger number of more senior, higher paid employees who later retired and were replaced by less senior employees with lower pay. This would drive the apparent average down even though no one’s pay was reduced.
A clearer picture of actual pay and benefit increase rates within the district can be obtained by comparing data on the same employees over this period (called “longitudinal” analysis.) For more on how this works and why it’s important, see our Methodology page.
In 2023, we find 641 full-time employees who have been with the district since 2014. This cohort of continuing employees has had their average total pay increase by $35,467/year (or 55.87%), with a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 5.06%/year.
This average growth rate is 44% (1.44times) greater than the rate of inflation in San Diego County (3.52%) during this period.
Administrative Employees
In 2023, the median total pay for 78 full-time administrative employees was $140,866/year. Including benefits, median total compensation was $184,343/year.
In addition to paycheck compensation, education employees have a “benefit advantage” in that their compensation in the form of contributions to their retirement plan (and often payments made on their behalf for healthcare insurance) which routinely exceed that paid by private employers. For more on that this article explains the details.
Calculating the benefit advantage of healthcare coverage is difficult given an apples-to-apples comparison with private coverage is almost impossible. However we do know education employees often receive healthcare coverage with lower deductibles, co-pays, and employee contributions (often zero) than private workers.
Quantifying this would require an analysis done agency-by-agency, perhaps individual-by-individual, so we’re going to leave that out of this overview. For reference, the Kaiser Foundation estimates that in 2023 the average employee contribution for private employees was $6,575/year ($547.92/month) with an average deductible of $1,735. An education employee whose healthcare premiums are 100% covered by their district, which is not uncommon for the employee’s own coverage, would therefore have $6,575 extra in their take-home pay that a private employee would have to pay to fund their healthcare coverage.
Retirement plan contributions are much easier to quantify given they are based on a percentage of the employee’s pay determined by the appropriate retirement plan (CalPERS for non-certificated employees, CalSTRS for certificated.) For details on those percentages and how they compare to private employer contributions, again please refer to this article.
With the calculated retirement benefit advantage of 15.17% for CalPERS members in 2023 (and excluding any healthcare compensation) a private worker would need to make $162,293/year to equal the take-home of a median OUSD administrator.
Using longitudinal data to examine long term pay and benefit growth, in 2023 we find 38 full-time administrative employees who have been with the district since 2014. These employees have had their median total pay increase by $72,728/ year (or 98.37%, almost double), with growth rate of 7.91%/year.
This growth rate is 125% (2.25times) greater than the rate of inflation (3.52%) during this time.
Overall, administrative pay and benefits accounted for 8.61% of total compensation spending for the district.
Certificated Employees
In 2023, the median total pay for 877 full-time certificated employees was $101,730/year. Including benefits, median total compensation was $137,839/year.
With the calculated retirement benefit advantage (see description under Administrative Employees above) of 19.73% for CalSTRS members in 2023, and excluding any healthcare advantage, a private worker would need to make $121,799/year to equal the disposable income of the median OUSD full time certificated employee.
A case is often made teachers should be paid commensurate with their educational attainment, based on what they could be making with the same education if they were working in private industry. I agree with that wholeheartedly, so let’s look at that.
Using income data from the US Census Bureau“Educational Attainment” and educational attainment data from the California Department of Education we see that in 2023 the median county resident with similar educational attainment to the mix of Oceanside teachers that year made $94,624 (projected for 2023, final data not yet available as of this writing.)
With the calculated retirement benefit advantage (see description under Administrative Employees above) of 19.73% for CalSTRS members in 2023, and excluding any healthcare advantage, a private worker would need to make $121,799/year to equal the disposable income of the median OUSD full time certificated employee. This is $27,176/year more than private workers.
If we assume a 30 year career, this difference could amount to a total of $1,895,761 in additional retirement benefits available to an OUSD certificated employee that would not be available to private workers (unless they were to fund their own retirement accordingly.)
Again using longitudinal data to examine long term pay and benefit growth, in 2023 we find 396 full-time certificated employees who have been with the district since 2014. These employees have had their median total pay increase by $36,273/year (or 47.54%), a growth rate of 4.42%/year.
This growth rate is 25% (1.25times) greater than the rate of inflation (3.52%) during this time.
Certificated pay and benefits account for 68.81% of total compensation expense for the district.
Spending
According to budget data, in OUSD during our examination period spending has risen from $9,028/student in 2014 to $23,112/student in 2023 an increase of $14,084/student, 156%(!) or 11.01%/year.
During this time the inflation rate in the county has averaged 3.52%, meaning school funding has gone up 213% (3.13 times) faster than inflation.
According to OUSD data from 2022-23, at that time average class size was 25.83 kids/class. This means the average class at OUSD has a total cost of $597,093/year.
Academic Performance
Tracking academic performance over the same ten-year period is not possible, the measuring system was changed in 2015. In 2017, the first full year of Smarter Balanced Testing results, 48.56% of OUSD kids were judged proficient in English, 37.56% proficient in Math.
In 2023, 46.66% were proficient in English and 34.62% proficient in Math. Both numbers lower than they were six years prior. If “more money” and “paying employees more” were solutions to that, one would think having funding go up almost 70% faster and teacher pay rising 25% greater than inflation would result in higher performance, not lower.
Conclusion
Facts are above, opinion is below.
This conclusion is my “informed opinion,” you are of course welcome to your own.
We can easily see that our schools are not doing their core job well. Most parents send their kids to school to learn English, Math, Science, History, etc. But those schools seem far more focused on issues that are not what parents want, and seem far more intent on benefitting employees than the kids.
This is all driven by – and approved by – a school board that does not appear to understand they are elected by parents to provide oversight to improve the education of kids. Our board’s goals look to be in sync with the District (led by the Superintendent). They won’t say this, but their actions say “More for adults, education of kids is secondary”.
We often hear failures in education are driven by “not enough money from the state”. We hear about how “budget cuts” hurt education. As we can see from actual data, none of that is true. During the last decade there has only been one year when per student funding declined – from 2019 to 2020. Per student funding dropped $105/student that year. Otherwise spending growth has been continuous.
There have been NO “funding cuts” in the examination period, although there have been “budget cuts”. Completely driven by the “need” for higher pay for adults.
We also hear higher pay for education employees is the best way to improve education. Coincidentally, the people who say that are usually the people who directly benefit financially from that. Seems somewhat obvious those people are normal humans subject to normal human nature – “more for me” is almost always the way to solve any problem…
We see data shows wage growth in OUSD has happened at rates significantly higher than average for the parents who send their kids to our schools, and pay rates now greatly exceed what those parents are paid. In some cases by significant amounts.
I’m not here to answer the Goldilocks Question – is total compensation of $184,343/year for administrators, or $137,839/year for certificated employees “too much, too little, or just right?” We often hear from our union that “all we want is fair pay.” Is a pay level $27,176 more than they would make using the same education in any other private industry “fair”? Or is that still “underpaid”?
You make the call, but keep in mind every dollar given to adults is a dollar that is no longer available to help improve the education of our kids.
My opinion is that it’s now time (past time) to elect board members who truly believe that our education system should have as it’s priority the improvement of education, not the improvement of the bank accounts of adults.
We need to pay people fairly for the work they do. I’m very happy as a community we can afford to pay OUSD employees at rates so high above what they would make doing other things in our area.
But given the tremendous increase in pay in the last decade has not resulted in better educational results, maybe it’s now time to understand that is not the solution, and perhaps focus our future spending on things that actually improve education, not just improve paychecks?
For a more detailed analysis and source references to the data cited, go to the folder below and find “Oceanside Unified Comp Analysis 2023”
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1V7MiRTnh_6h2-Y7AF9JtjrILPz9_tdcr?usp=sharing
Agree or disagree, email me at info@sandiegoschools.net. If you feel any of this analysis is in error, I would love to hear about it. The source data files are in the links below.
References/Data Sources
For a PDF copy of this go to https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zQ6SpToCVYEU4T4vD_Y-hH6zt75PA5Lp/view?usp=drive_link
For a list of references and data sources please go to http://toddmaddison.com/education/references
For a complete description of the methodology in these calculations, please go to http://toddmaddison.com/education/methodology
California Department of Education’s “Annual Financial Data” – https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/fd/fd/
California Department of Industrial Relations Inflation Data – https://www.dir.ca.gov/OPRL/CAPriceIndex.htm
US Bureau of Labor Statistics Wage Data – https://data.bls.gov/PDQWeb/en
US Census Bureau American Communities Survey Data, wages by Educational Attainment data – https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?q=educational%20attainment&g=&hidePreview=false&table=S1501&tid=ACSST1YENDYEAR.S1501&t=Educational%20Attainment&lastDisplayedRow=16&vintage=ENDYEAR
California Department of Education DataQuest, District-specific educational attainment data (“Staff Education Report – District Level”) – https://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/PaifSearchName.asp?TheENDYEAR=ENDYEAR-19&cTopic=Paif&cLevel=District&cName=&cCounty=&cTimeFrame=S
Vanguard Group “How America Saves” – https://institutional.vanguard.com/content/dam/inst/iig-transformation/insights/pdf/2024/has/how_america_saves_report_2024.pdf
Kaiser Foundation “Employer Health Benefits Survey” https://www.kff.org/health-costs/report/2023-employer-health-benefits-survey/
CalPERS Contribution Rates – https://www.calpers.ca.gov/page/employers/actuarial-resources/employer-contributions
CalSTRS Contribution Rates – https://www.calstrs.com/contributions
Public Pay Data (Transparent California) – http://transparentcalifornia.com
For a copy of this in electronic format, as well as much of the supporting data, go to – https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1V7MiRTnh_6h2-Y7AF9JtjrILPz9_tdcr?usp=sharing and drill down through the folders to this district.