Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson is getting a $40,000 raise, bringing her annual base pay up to $300,000.
Chicago Board of Education members approved the pay increase Wednesday, saying they considered the district’s performance under her leadership and compensation of leaders of comparable districts.
After emerging from a closed session, board President Miguel del Valle said Jackson’s raise was approved “unanimously and vigorously.”
“Dr. Jackson has demonstrated excellent and fearless leadership, an ambitious vision for every student in Chicago Public Schools, and an unwavering commitment and dedication to serving our 355,156 CPS students and their families, as well as our 38,620 employees. She is a nationally respected leader and the district is grateful to have her at the helm of the third largest school system in the country,” del Valle said.
“Her compensation, however, is not on par with that of superintendents across the state or country,” he continued. “We took it as a matter of equity to ensure that the CEO of Chicago Public Schools is fairly compensated and this salary adjustment is a step in that direction.”
The other terms of Jackson’s contract, which started in 2018 and runs through June, were unchanged.
As of September, her base salary was $260,000 and her benefit cost was $62,839. The second-highest paid employee, Chief Financial Officer Miroslava Krug, made $230,000 with a benefit cost of $42,927. Third was Chief Education Officer LaTanya McDade, with a $210,000 salary and $52,709 benefit cost. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, in comparison, has a base salary of $216,210.
Jackson’s $40,000 raise is comparable to the base salary of a school security officer, custodial worker or teacher assistant.
The board also approved new compensation guidelines intended to advance diversity and equity among nonunion staff.
The Chicago Teachers Union’s contract, reached after an 11-day strike in 2019, guarantees all CTU members a 16% raise over the course of the five-year deal. But while the CTU represents more than 25,000 CPS workers, and Service Employees Union International Local 73 represents nearly 8,000, the district’s central and network offices employ another 1,500 people who are not represented by a union.
The nonunion compensation structure hasn’t been updated in more than a decade and is not equitable or aligned to the market, said deputy talent officer Christina Jordan.
“Actively identifying inequities that hinder our ability to obtain diverse talent must be a focus of our everyday efforts,” Jordan told the board.
The board hired consulting firm Korn Ferry and conducted a comprehensive review of central and network office jobs, comparing each to a similar role in the general labor market using local and national salary data. Roles unique to schools were “benchmarked” to nine large school districts, Jordan said.
A pay equity study and staffing analysis showed significant disparities among nonunion employees, who include administrative and support, professional and management staff along with officers, such as chief financial or education officer.
Jordan defined pay equity as compensating employees the same for doing similar jobs, while taking into account factors such as experience level, job performance and tenure.
Overall, women made closer to the market value for their jobs than men did, averaging 98.1 cents to the market dollar compared with men at 96.9 cents, according to the study. At 98.3 cents to the dollar, white employees were paid closer to market rates than Black and Latino employees, who made 96.5 cents.
But for each dollar a man working in the central or network offices is paid, women are paid only 94 cents. For every dollar a white employee makes, Black employees are paid only 83 cents and Latino employees just 78 cents, according to the presentation.
Black people, Latinos and women are all overrepresented in lower-level nonunion roles, and Latinos ware particularly underrepresented among higher-level positions, according to the analysis.
At the helm of the district, Jackson and McDade are both Black, as are 36% of officers; another 38% of officers are white, 19% are Latino and 4% are Asian. But the number of white people in management positions is nearly double the combined total of Black and Latino managers. Management staff is about 43% white, 33% Black, 14% Latino and 6% Asian. Professional staff members are 27% white, 41% Black, 23% Latino and 6% Asian. The administrative and support staff is 9% white, 47% Black, 38% Latino and 3% Asian.
Women make up 67% of central and network staff, but are less and less represented as the job grade increases: 77% of administrative and support staff are women, then 70% of professional staff, 59% of managersand 49% of officers.
The city of Chicago is roughly equal parts Black, Latino and white, and close to 7% Asian. CPS students are 47% Latino, 36% Black, 11% white and 4% Asian. Its teaching force is about 50% white, 22% Latino, 21% Black and 4% Asian.
The under- and overrepresentation of different demographic groups has serious implications for employees’ opportunities for growth and pay equity, Jordan said.
“We can see the effects of having women, Black and Latinx employees skew toward administrative and support roles,” she said. “… It is clear here that representation matters. When we see groups that have low representation in managerial jobs, we tend to see an overall gap in pay. … This is compounded when a group is over-represented in administrative and support roles.”
Though central office and network staff are just a fraction of the district’s employees, CPS is still one of the state’s biggest employers, Jordan said.
“Addressing and correcting inequities in our pay practices will drive change beyond CPS by increasing the economic impact that our employees make within their communities,” she said.
Effective next month, 3% of nonunion employees paid below new minimums will have their salaries raised to meet the floor, and 18% will receive an “equity adjustment.” Others will get a 2% raise. The new compensation plan will cost $2.5 million in the current fiscal year, which district officials said is already accounted for in the budget.
New guidelines include a structure for job classification with consistent titles and guidelines for salary adjustments. That involves removing gender and race-based language from job descriptions, helping managers create consistent interviewing processes and questions, establishing diverse interviewing teams and requiring that at least half of the candidates who complete an interview process are people of color.
The district is also making changes specific to school leaders, based on feedback from more than 100 principals and assistant principals, said Chief Talent Officer Matt Lyons.
“We heard school leaders should get the same annual raises as the unions, we heard that some experienced administrators were maxed out on the step schedule and that newer assistant principals in particular were not compensated enough,” Lyons said.
Unlike most school-based staff, school leaders haven’t seen raises since 2017, Lyons said. Now CPS plans to increase their salaries by $15,000 over four years, starting with $4,000 in July. The added cost will be $4.5 million annually, Lyons said.
The plan also sets a minimum raise of 5% for teachers who are promoted to assistant principal positions and adds a stipend for administrators who work an extended school year or summer school.
Chicago Principals and Administrators Association President Troy LaRaviere reminded the board of a time earlier in the year when he spoke to them about the issue of pay for school leaders.
“Your administrators, who are majority nonwhite, are making less than the majority white teaching force that they supervise and this is an extreme danger to the principal pipeline,” LaRaviere said. “By … deciding to give administrators raises similar to the ones you give teachers over the next four years, you have ensured that this picture does not get worse, but you have done absolutely nothing to change that. That is an objective fact. In four years, assistant principals, who are majority people of color, will still be earning less per hour and in many case less in total earnings than the majority white teaching force they supervise. This is a time bomb for the principal pipeline. So while what you did today was appreciated and I mean that, the time bomb is still going to go off if there is not an across-the-board salary adjustment at some point in the next couple years. We look forward to working with you to address this impending crisis.”
Vice President Sendhil Revuluri said he supported the changes but asked about their timing and how the district will pay for them.
“These are worthwhile but significant financial investments for the district, and it is at at time when we are kind of crunched both on the revenue side and on the expenditure side, so there is a lot of uncertainty,” Revuluri said. “… We should have done this along time ago, but why now?”
“These were planned investments well before the start of this fiscal year,” Lyons said. “… In terms of the question about why now, … I think we can all recognize there’s never really a great time to make tough choices, but fundamentally, caring about equity as an organization means doing something when we find inequities and actually more than that, to seek it out intentionally if we suspect it there. And I think this is maybe the best example of something that is within our control, of all the inequities we encounter in this work, and everyone knows this depending on where they sit, they may see it in different ways, but this one is within our control fully to address and on a shorter time span than most. It’s necessary and it’s necessary to do it as soon as we can.”
hleone@chicagotribune.com
