JENNIFER GUSTAVSON FILE PHOTO | Mount Sinai superintendent Anthony Bonasera would stand to lose $130,000 under Governor Andrew Cuomo's proposed salary cap plan.

The heads of the five local school districts would be stripped of more than $200,000 of annual income if Governor Andrew Cuomo’s proposed superintendent salary cap became reality.

The Governor said his latest cost-saving proposal, announced Monday, would help New York save more than $15 million annually as it attempts to close a $10 billion deficit.

But the three area superintendents who spoke to Northshoresun.com this week said such a proposal merely serves as pandering to the public and wouldn’t do enough to fix a much larger problem.

“This is more for public consumption,” said Mount Sinai superintendent Anthony Bonasera. “It plays well. It deflects the real responsibility for the situation that lies at the state level.”

Shoreham-Wading River superintendent Harriet Copel concurred, saying state legislators need to set their sights on fixing the way public schools are funded.

“I think that there are some fundamental instructional issues that need to be addressed in the funding and structure of public education in the state of New York,” she said. “I think it’s a much bigger problem than just what superintendents make.”

Dr. Bonasera would stand to lose more than any of the five local superintendents if a tax cap was implemented. He would see his base salary of more than $285,000 reduced to just $155,000 — a 46 percent reduction.

The proposed salaries under the cap would be based on district enrollment. Under the plan, the superintendent in Shoreham-Wading River would also make $155,000; superintendents in Miller Place and Rocky Point would make $165,000; and the Longwood schools chief would see his salary reduced to $175,000.

Dr. Bonasera was critical of a plan that would base salaries on enrollment, saying the number of students in a district and the workload of a superintendent don’t always add up.

“The amount of work isn’t necessarily reflected by the size [of the district],” he said.

And the size of a school district fluctuates from year to year, administrators warned. In fact, the school-age population on Long Island dropped by nearly 20,000 students between 2004-05 and 2009-10 and is projected to decrease by another 38,000 over the next five years, according to Newsday. Such a steep decline in enrollment has administrators wondering how that would translate in terms of future salaries.

The five current superintendents of SunLand districts combined to make $1.2 million in 2010, according to seethroughny.net, which lists the annual earnings of all New York public employees. [That figure reflects total income for the 2010 calendar year, including bonuses. It also fails to take into account that two of those administrators — Michael Ring of Rocky Point and Susan Hodun of Miller Place — served as deputy superintendents for part of the year].

Under the governor’s proposal, the base salaries of the same five administrators would add up to about $815,000.
Longwood superintendent Allan Gerstenlauer, whose salary would shrink by more than $40,000 under the plan, said a salary cap would make it challenging for districts to find adequate administrators.

“There is currently a shortage of superintendents,” Dr. Gerstenlauer said. “I think if you put a cap on the salary, that’s going to exacerbate the shortage in the employee pool and I think districts are going to have a lot of difficulty finding well-suited and qualified candidates to take these positions.”

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