BRISTOL — The list of the top 10 wage-earners for 2006 in the Bristol Warren Regional School District follows the hierarchy of the administration.

Schools Supt. Edward P. Mara occupies the top spot with a salary of $133,799.39, followed by director of administration and finance Jane F. Correia, who was paid $114,646.61. The other positions on the list go down the line of other department heads in the district’s central office and school principals.

Mara is not just the highest-paid employee in the district. He also earns more than any municipal worker in the district’s two member towns. Nearly all the other top earners in the school district are also paid more than the highest-paid town employees.

In fact, if the school district’s top 10 list were combined with those for municipal workers in Bristol and Warren, school administrators would still occupy 9 of the 10 spots. The only nonschool employee would be Frank J. Pimental Jr., a foreman in Bristol’s Department of Public Works who was the top wage-earner in town in 2006 only because he retired that year and collected $40,256.36 as compensation for sick days and vacation time that he accrued over 32 years.

If that one-time payment to Pimental were disregarded, he would lose his place on the list. All 10 spots would then be occupied by school district administrators.

Put another way, the 10th-highest earner in the school district — Karen E. Annotti, the principal at Rockwell School, who was paid $90,402.88 — made nearly $2,000 more than the highest-paid municipal worker in Warren — police Patrolman Christopher A. Perrault, who was paid $88,660.32, including $31,866.39 in overtime and another $9,227.18 in stipends and detail pay.

The findings are based on a Journal survey in which all Rhode Island cities and towns were asked last year to provide payroll information for all their employees from 2006.

Mara said the pay for Bristol Warren schools administrators is commensurate to the salaries in other districts in Rhode Island. Actually, he said, the district is “in the middle of the pack” in terms of salaries.

He emphasized that, unlike teachers who have much of the summer off, administrators work year-round, so they generally earn more.

Additionally, the district’s higher salaries could be explained by the size of the staff that administrators oversee compared to those managed by the top officials for the towns of Warren and Bristol.

For example, in 2006, Mara was in charge of a staff equivalent to 347 full-time teachers and 192 support workers serving 3,543 students. In that same year, Bristol Town Administrator Diane Mederos headed up a staff of 153 full-time workers and Warren Town Manager Michael Abbruzzi oversaw a full-time staff of 68. (Both Warren and Bristol also employed many part-time workers.)

For that year, Mara’s salary dwarfed the $72,458.81 that Mederos was paid and the $66,650 that Abbruzzi earned.

Compiled by Paul Edward Parker

THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL

Source: Bristol-Warren School Dept.

akuffner@projo.com