The highest 2006 salary in the Exeter-West Greenwich School District went to the director of curriculum, Nancy Daley, who earned $101,444.

Most of the other employees on the district’s top-10 salary list are principals or assistant principals. Additional top earners included Maureen Decrescenzo, director of special services, now retired; Robert V. Ross, head of administration, and Christopher Cobain, then director of student affairs and now an assistant principal at Lincoln Middle School.

Supt. Thomas J. Geismar, hired as superintendent in 2007, said that administrators make bigger bucks because of their advanced degrees and credentials, but also because they “bear responsibility for a broader audience.”

“I am accountable in some way shape or form for everyone in this district. The administrators’ level of accountability and responsibility is the highest too,” Geismar said. “We are sitting … twice a month in front of the School Committee and the public to be accountable. There is some value to that, and the value and experience and expertise people bring to the table.”

The Journal compiled the list of top-paid employees as part of a statewide look at school and municipal payrolls during calendar year 2006. Figures were given to the newspaper by local school and town officials.

The Journal’s compilation looked at the total gross pay, which is the total amount paid to employees before taxes are deducted. It does not include the cost of benefits, but it does include base salary or wages, and other forms of income, such as overtime, stipends and severance packages.

One teacher did make the Exeter-West Greenwich top-10 pay list for 2006 — but she wasn’t working in the schools that year.

Sharon Lee, a high school biology teacher with a doctorate in science education, had been on loan to the state Department of Education as a fellow since 2004. That was Lee’s status until last November, when she became a permanent Education Department employee.

During the on-loan period, the state paid her district salary, which in 2006 was $76,000, plus pay for days worked beyond the normal school year. Her total pay for that year, $86,726, placed her ninth on the list.

The superintendent of schools is conspicuously, but understandably, absent from the top-10 list for 2006.

Roy M. Seitsinger left the top post in July of that year and accepted a position with the Department of Education. The superintendency was filled on an interim basis through the end of the year, when Geismar was appointed.

lsparks@projo.com