Prep-School
Payday
Top headmasters now
command packages of $400,000 or more. How the job is changing -- and what's
driving up salaries.
By ELLEN
GAMERMAN
January 20, 2007; Page P1
Since its founding in 1970, Forsyth Country Day School in
Lewisville, N.C., has built an idyllic campus and become known for sending
graduates on to the Ivy League. Forsyth stands out another way, too: Its
headmaster, Henry M. Battle Jr., received more than $300,000 in salary and
bonuses in 2004-05, according to the school's most recently available tax
filings. That's nearly double the national median salary for private-school
chiefs -- and above the pay at names like New York's Dalton and Connecticut's
Choate Rosemary Hall.
Across the country, the job description for private-school
headmasters is changing -- and that is rapidly lifting their pay. With
competition fierce for candidates who combine CEO-level business acumen and
academic credentials, total compensation packages worth $400,000 or more are
increasingly common. In some cases, candidates are getting new perks, from
college-style sabbaticals to travel stipends.
To see how salaries are changing at individual schools, The
Wall Street Journal reviewed tax filings for 50 elite private institutions.
Most showed significant increases over the five-year period culminating in
2004-05. About half the raises topped 40%, with 10 schools exceeding 60% over
the five years. Woodward Academy of College Park, Ga., hired a former Williams
College president at $320,232, doubling what it had paid five years earlier.
Among the country's most highly compensated heads of school:
Barbara Landis Chase, of Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., who earned just
over $500,000 in salary, benefits and expenses for 2004-05; Barbara Wagner, at
the Marlborough School in Los Angeles, who earned $475,000; and Henry C. Moses,
the head of New York's Trinity School, at $487,000.
Growing fundraising pressures -- tied to competition to
build facilities that help attract top students -- are changing who gets tapped
and how schools make their selections. At the Pingry School in New Jersey, new
head Nathaniel Conard has an MBA and started his career as a management
consultant for Bain & Co. To replace its longtime headmaster, the Hotchkiss
School in Connecticut enlisted executive recruiting firm Spencer Stuart; a
global search ended with a new head who previously worked in Botswana and
Wales. Some schools are even breaking off academic duties into a separate role
to give the headmaster more time to focus on the business side.
Schools say they need to pay a premium to attract top
talent, especially as competitors increasingly snatch up successful
headmasters. They also say salaries account for a fairly small part of overall
expenses and are not related to tuition hikes; nationally, tuition rose 15%
between 2000-01 and 2005-06.
"Salaries
have gone up because people realize the job is no longer being Mr. Chips, who
just smiles and shakes hands," says Ellen Moceri, head of school at Ransom
Everglades in Coconut Grove, Fla. Ms. Moceri has helped raise $16 million so
far to increase the school's endowment and fund a new athletic center. Ms.
Moceri's base salary rose 63%, to $220,000, over the four-year period ending
2004-05.
PAYING
THE PRINCIPAL
• See how the
compensation
for heads of school at top prep schools has changed between academic years
2004-05 and 1999-2000.
• Plus,
listen to a podcast on today's private schools and the changing nature of the headmaster's
role.
At Marlborough in Los Angeles, board of trustees head
Gretchen H. Milligan says Ms. Wagner's salary was based on her strong
performance and what peer schools are paying. A Trinity spokesman says that
school's head is notable for his leadership skills, while Phillips Academy says
Ms. Chase has raised $233 million, doubled the school's financial aid budget
and added a new science center and two new ice rinks to the campus during her
tenure.
Forsyth Country Day says its head has increased the
endowment from less than $1 million in 1999 to $14 million today and more than
doubled enrollment to 1,040 students. "I'm confident he gets job offers
all the time," says Tim Cooper, chairman of the board of trustees.
The gap between private-school chiefs and their public-education
counterparts is sizeable. At Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and
Technology in Alexandria, Va., considered by education experts to be among the
nation's top public schools, principal Evan Glazer makes $112,601. Within the
private-school ranks, the disparity between heads and faculty can be wide, too,
with few teachers making more than $100,000.
Schools and recruiters anticipate that competition, and thus
salaries, will rise further amid a wave of likely private-school job openings.
Some 72% of sitting heads of school are expected to retire within the next
decade, as baby boomers who filled those jobs reach retirement age, according
to a survey by the National Association of Independent Schools. At the same
time, the number of high-school age kids is projected to drop beginning next
year, meaning more competition to impress parents and win the best students.
Adding to the pressure: the growing influence of executive
search firms and salary negotiators in the hiring process. Spencer Stuart started
its education and nonprofit practice five years ago and says it looks for
candidates not just at U.S. prep schools, but abroad and in the top ranks of
small universities. Carney, Sandoe & Associates, a recruiting firm in
Boston, estimates it is doing twice as many headmaster searches now as a decade
ago, partly because there are new charter, magnet and independent schools to
represent. The firm charges schools 33% of a winning candidate's first-year
salary, which can amount to $100,000 or more.
In addition, boards today are increasingly stacked with
executives from the corporate world, for whom tying pay to measurable
performance is a priority.
At the
Lakeside School in Seattle, headmaster Bernard Noe says he received a bonus
last year after helping the school increase applications by 12% and raising $83
million in a fundraising initiative. Mr. Noe says up to 15% of his annual pay
is based on performance -- specifically, the results of an annual 90-page
evaluation by board members, faculty, parents and some students. The evaluation
covers enrollment trends, Ivy League acceptance rates and fundraising results.
When Detroit Country Day School hires its new headmaster to
take over next year, it plans to pay in the top 10% of salaries nationwide,
says Ken Whipple, head of Detroit Country Day's board of trustees. (Mr. Whipple
is chairman of Michigan-based CMS Energy; other Detroit Country Day board
members include General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner and Microsoft CEO Steve
Ballmer.) On behalf of the school, Carney, Sandoe is wooing some presidents of
small universities. In contrast, the last head was promoted from assistant
headmaster 21 years ago. Mr. Whipple says the school is looking for an
academic, but he says business credentials are equally important: "We're
not looking for the guy with the leather patches on his sport coat."
For a recent search, Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts
decided to get more input from the wider school community. It had finalists
visit the campus and answer questions from board members, faculty, parents and
even students -- one of whom asked the eventual winner, Margarita O'Byrne
Curtis, a dean of studies from Andover, what her favorite Disney movie was.
(Her answer: "101 Dalmatians".) J. Jeffry Louis, president of the board
at Deerfield, says the school set up an email address for feedback, and he read
more than 500 responses.
"I think it made some people uneasy in that you might
put the students in the position where they'd get a favorite and they'd be
disappointed," he says. "But I think that's the real world." The
previous head of Deerfield, Eric Widmer, earned a salary of $309,000 in
2004-05.
For years, salaries of heads of schools were closely guarded
secrets. But the proliferation of search firms, which often collect salary data
from schools, made top administrators aware of what their peers were earning.
By the mid-1990s, salary information for nonreligious private schools, filed on
tax forms, was becoming more accessible to anyone with an Internet connection.
The increased transparency resulted in a rash of pay hikes that schools say
were necessary to bring underpaid heads more in line with their peers.
Salaries generated national attention in 2003 when the package of the head of St. Paul's School in Concord, N.H., -- $524,000 in salary, benefits and deferred compensation, along with a $32,000 stipend for his wife to assist in his official duties -- became public. The school, which reached an agreement with the New Hampshire attorney general to restrict pay increases for its two top administrators, proved a cautionary tale for many other private schools. Many schools today say they are conscious of not appearing to overpay their headmaster, while at the same time, paying enough to keep them.
