{"id":184324,"date":"2026-05-05T13:49:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T13:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/184324\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T13:49:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T13:49:07","slug":"despite-tax-revolt-lower-merion-keeps-administrator-pay-high-pennsylvania","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/184324\/","title":{"rendered":"Despite tax revolt, Lower Merion keeps administrator pay high | Pennsylvania"},"content":{"rendered":"

(The Center\u00a0Square) \u2013 Despite a $27 million settlement with taxpayers in 2022, Lower Merion School District continues to pay\u00a0top-tier\u00a0salaries to administrators.<\/p>\n

Assistant high school principals in the\u00a0affluent Philadelphia suburb\u00a0earn\u00a0nearly $170,000\u00a0a year, while the superintendent makes\u00a0nearly $300,000,\u00a0according to\u00a0an investigation\u00a0by\u00a0The Center\u00a0Square. These high salaries endured because of\u00a0a strong\u00a0property tax base\u00a0and\u00a0the absence of\u00a0a\u00a0sustained taxpayer backlash.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A revolt began in 2016 over a proposal\u00a0by school district officials\u00a0to raise property taxes\u00a0amid accusations that officials hid budget surpluses. It\u00a0culminated in\u00a0June 2022\u00a0with\u00a0a class-action\u00a0<\/a>settlement<\/a> that\u00a0returned\u00a0$27 million to taxpayers. While school district officials denied\u00a0wrongdoing, the\u00a0settlement provided\u00a0$15 million to taxpayers\u00a0who lived in Lower Merion\u00a0as of August 2016, along with $4 million installments\u00a0paid\u00a0in 2023, 2024, and 2025.<\/p>\n

In April 2025, the\u00a0district\u00a0hired a new superintendent, Dr. Frank Ranelli<\/a>, giving him a five-year contract valued at $1.5 million. His starting annual salary was $290,000. After inflation, that was lower than the $240,000\u00a0given\u00a0to superintendent Robert Copeland\u00a0in 2015.<\/p>\n

Yet\u00a0the contract was\u00a0more generous\u00a0in key areas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Center Square\u00a0obtained records\u00a0under Pennsylvania\u2019s right-to-know law\u00a0that\u00a0show\u00a0Ranelli\u2019s\u00a0deal\u00a0includes\u00a0a\u00a02% annual pay increase \u2014 higher than the\u00a01.5% annual increase\u00a0given to\u00a0<\/a>Copeland<\/a> in 2015. If Ranelli receives another five-year deal, he would make more even after inflation than Copeland. The contract also\u00a0permits\u00a0five weeks\u00a0of\u00a0vacation,\u00a012\u00a0days\u00a0of\u00a0sick leave,\u00a0and\u00a0$500 for a car each month.<\/p>\n

The big salaries\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0stop at the top.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Robin\u00a0Klaibe, principal at Belmont Hills Elementary that has 344 students,\u00a0made\u00a0$164,816 from December 2024 to December 2025.\u00a0Lauren Hopkins, assistant principal at Lower Merion High School,\u00a0received $167,386\u00a0in salary and $11,926 in payouts for unused vacation payouts. Her colleague, Karen\u00a0deFranco, made $172,201\u00a0in base pay. Hopkins and deFranco were two of the four assistant principals at the school of 1,720 students<\/a>, perhaps best known as the alma mater of the late basketball great Kobe Bryant.<\/p>\n

Ranelli\u2019s salary was less than that of Philadelphia\u2019s superintendent, Tony Watlington, who\u00a0earned $367,500. Yet\u00a0Lower Merion has just 8,500 students compared to Philadelphia\u2019s 198,000<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One education scholar\u00a0noted that high salaries for administrators\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0necessarily translate into high\u00a0student\u00a0test\u00a0scores.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re spending more than their peers, and not all their schools are high performing, though they\u2019re all pretty high,\u201d\u00a0Marguerite Roza, a research professor\u00a0at Georgetown University\u2019s\u00a0Edunomics\u00a0Lab, told The Center Square.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Former Lower Merion superintendent Dr. Christopher W. McGinley said the salaries\u00a0are not unusual in some districts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not sure where assistant principal salaries are in that range, but there are places where that title is used, but the individual may have all of the same responsibilities as a building principal does,\u201d he said in an interview.\u00a0\u201cThat salary range could be very\u00a0appropriate compensation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Education experts say the\u00a0district\u2019s\u00a0high salaries\u00a0are\u00a0mainly a\u00a0function of its wealth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOur experience\u00a0is that\u00a0school districts spend what they can,\u201d\u00a0Roza\u00a0said. \u201cMost of that money, more than $35,000 per kid, is locally raised, and some taxpayers will pay for that. We see the same thing in the Chicago suburbs.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Pennsylvania, Lower Merion spent the seventh-most per student\u00a0in the state. Eighty-four percent or $31,000 came from\u00a0local funding, chiefly from property taxes, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics.\u00a0By contrast,\u00a0Philadelphia spent $24,744 per pupil, $10,000 of which came from local sources.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen a school district has\u00a0substantially more revenue per student, there is more available to pay for everything, including administrator pay, \u201d said Molly Pileggi, a scholar at Research Action, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit research group, in an interview with The Center Square.<\/p>\n

The undoing of a revolt\u00a0<\/p>\n

Those high salaries also continue\u00a0because\u00a0of the lack of a sustained\u00a0taxpayer’s\u00a0backlash.<\/p>\n

In 2016, Lower Merion residents Philip Browndies and Catherine Marchand, along with attorney Arthur Alan Wolk,\u00a0filed a class-action lawsuit<\/a>\u00a0challenging the school district’s planned 4.4% property tax hike for the 2016-17 school year\u2014the case that would lead to the $27 million settlement in 2022. That increase is significantly less than what local officials have approved not once but twice in the past 18 months. Wolk did not return two calls for comment.<\/p>\n

Seeking to stem further tax hikes,\u00a0four\u00a0Republicans\u00a0ran for\u00a0seats on the nine-member\u00a0school\u00a0board on a platform of fiscal accountability\u00a0in November. \u201cWe deserve transparency,\u201d they wrote on their Facebook page. \u201cJoin us to demand answers and more accountability.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the heavily Democratic\u00a0township,\u00a0each of the four Republicans lost decidedly.\u00a0None of their publicly listed telephone numbers were active.<\/p>\n

In December, Lower Merion commissioners approved an additional 8% hike in property taxes, down from the initial proposal of 9.5%.<\/p>\n

Then in January, the school board floated an\u00a0additional\u00a03.5% hike on property taxes for next school year to fill a $9.5 million budget gap.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(The Center\u00a0Square) \u2013 Despite a $27 million settlement with taxpayers in 2022, Lower Merion School District continues to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184325,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[227,693,16069,183,185,184,186,856,28,8345],"class_list":["post-184324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lower-merion","tag-education","tag-investigations","tag-issues","tag-lower-merion","tag-lower-merion-headlines","tag-lower-merion-news","tag-lower-merion-township","tag-national","tag-pennsylvania","tag-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}