Classes let out at Barrington High School and children head home.

The Providence Journal / Frieda Squires

BARRINGTON — You can’t say that the 16,000 people in town shortchange their schools.

Payroll numbers from 2006 show that this town, with the highest median income in the state, spends 78.4 percent of its payroll on teachers and staff, a higher ratio than any other community in the East Bay region.

It’s also the fifth highest in Rhode Island.

In addition, the numbers show that the educational staff is paid well, at least compared to other school salaries in East Bay. The average pay for a full-time employee, a number gleaned from combining part-time positions into full-time equivalents, or FTEs, is $57,840.

Only Portsmouth pays more per full-timer.

Barrington also has 39 residents for every FTE in the School Department, the lowest in the region. Put another way, the town has more teachers and staffers per resident than any other East Bay town, according to Census and state Department of Education data.

When it comes to payroll expenses outside the schools, Barrington has 137 residents per FTE, which is in the middle of the pack in a ranking among other East Bay communities. The average pay per FTE for municipal employees is just under $56,000, which is higher than Bristol, Little Compton, Tiverton and Warren, but lower than East Providence, Middletown, Newport and Portsmouth.

The findings are based on a Journal survey in which all cities and towns were asked to provide information on all employees from 2006, including how much they made. The numbers were not audited.

The data were also used to compare how much the average worker made that year and how many people were employed by a municipality or school system.

But the numbers may not be definitive.

For example, the Barrington count of full-time workers in municipal government, a number reported to the state, was precisely that. Part-time workers were not included. A city or town that hired large numbers of temporary or seasonal workers — such as substitute teachers, lifeguards or recreation workers — may have reported the numbers differently, listing two half-time jobs as one FTE. As a result, some communities may appear to have a work force that was larger and lower paid than a community that did not.

Staffing numbers from the schools, taken from the state Department of Education, do lump everyone together into FTEs.

In addition, payroll numbers don’t tell the full story of what a worker costs the town. The numbers do not include benefit costs, which can vary widely depending on medical and retirement plans.

The payroll data provided directly to The Journal, which lists individual employees, their positions, and how much they made, show 262 non-school workers that year, 135 of whom were part-timers. Part-time salaries ranged from $26 to $70,824. One-hundred twenty-one municipal workers were paid less than $1,000 in 2006.

Outside of municipal government, the School Department reported 683 employees in 2006. Eleven were listed as retired or resigned, 266 were part-timers and 406 worked fulltime.

The salaries for the part-timer workers ranged from nearly $71,000 for an occupational therapist to $30 for a substitute teacher. Eighty-five of them were paid less than $1,000 that year.

For the whole town, 46 percent of the full-time workers and 61 percent of the part-time employees reported living in town.

When The Journal looked at where nonschool payroll money was spent, Barrington ranked fifth for social programs such as beaches, parks, senior centers, welfare programs and library services (14 percent of the municipal budget went for that purpose); and ninth for public services, which included public works functions such as road maintenance and trash pickup (24 percent of the budget was used for that).

School funds were not included in those calculations.

Town spending was well below average in four other categories. Barrington ranked:

•29th for administration, including Town Hall functions like administrative staff, such as the offices of the town clerk, assessor and tax collector (only 9.5 percent of the budget went for that purpose).

•30th for public safety, even though the town spent 46 percent of its municipal budget for police, fire and rescue services in 2006.

•31st for regulatory services such as planning, zoning and code enforcement (only 2.6 percent of payroll funds went for that).

•37th for legislative expenses, such as the Town Council and their support staffs, although those numbers — it was 0.04 percent of the budget for Barrington — tended to be very low in most communities.

“We do have a reputation for doing high-quality service. Based on our ranking we’re doing it in a cost-effective way,” said Town Manager Peter DeAngelis. “Most people here think they get more for their tax dollar.” THE PUBLIC PAYROLL: EAST BAY

Payroll costs are by far the biggest item in the budgets of cities and towns. In the East Bay region, pay for municipal employees totaled more than $94 million, according to reports supplied to The Journal for each community for the calendar year 2006. The money for salaries came from local taxes, along with fees, grants and other sources.

In every community except for Newport, more money is spent on schools than on nonschool functions such as police and fire protection and public works.

The median household income offers a possible measure of the citizens’ ability to pay their municipal workers.

POPULATION is from 2006 U.S. Census estimates. MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOME is from 2000 Census, adjusted for 17 percent inflation from 2000 to 2006. SCHOOL and NON-SCHOOL PAYROLLS were compiled by the Journal from 2006 figures. SCHOOL FTEs are from the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for 2005-06 school year and are a total of teachers and staff. NON-SCHOOL FTEs are from the state Office of Municipal Affairs for 2007 fiscal year. (FTEs are calculated with a full-time employee counting as one and a part-time worker counting as a fraction of one, depending on how many hours he or she works.)

THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL

gemery@projo.com