At the El Paso Taxpayer Revolt, we regularly publish the salaries of public servants, and today we are sharing the salaries of all 7,462 EPISD employees in descending order.
The list is current as of May 21 and we received it after submitting an open records request, for which the district charged us $30.00. We have never once been charged for a salary list by a local taxing entity until now.
EPISD payroll accounts for 89% of their budget, and given their current financial challenges, we felt it important to share this information with the media and public at large.
The highest paid employee is Superintendent Brian Lusk, who earns $360,000, more than double the salary of Governor Greg Abbot.
120 employees earn over $100,000 per year, up from 98 employees in August 2023 (the last time we checked).
Ranking the employees in descending order of income, one must scroll down to the 473rd employee before finding a teacher! That would be Maria Hughes, who teaches art to elementary students and earns $82,559 per year.
It is sobering to remember that Lyndon B. Johnson was educated in a one-room school house that had only a single employee (the teacher), and he went on to become President of the United States.
How did it come to this, and how is it that we have nine school districts, each with a superintendent and hundreds of administrators, in a County with less than 878,000 inhabitants?
Lord help us.