(The Center Square) \u2013 Despite a $27 million settlement with taxpayers in 2022, Lower Merion School District continues to pay top-tier salaries to administrators.<\/p>\n
Assistant high school principals in the affluent Philadelphia suburb earn nearly $170,000 a year, while the superintendent makes nearly $300,000, according to an investigation by The Center Square. These high salaries endured because of a strong property tax base and the absence of a sustained taxpayer backlash. <\/p>\n
A revolt began in 2016 over a proposal by school district officials to raise property taxes amid accusations that officials hid budget surpluses. It culminated in June 2022 with a class-action <\/a>settlement<\/a> that returned $27 million to taxpayers. While school district officials denied wrongdoing, the settlement provided $15 million to taxpayers who lived in Lower Merion as of August 2016, along with $4 million installments paid in 2023, 2024, and 2025.<\/p>\n In April 2025, the district hired 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 given to superintendent Robert Copeland in 2015.<\/p>\n Yet the contract was more generous in key areas. <\/p>\n The Center Square obtained records under Pennsylvania\u2019s right-to-know law that show Ranelli\u2019s deal includes a 2% annual pay increase \u2014 higher than the 1.5% annual increase given to <\/a>Copeland<\/a> in 2015. If Ranelli receives another five-year deal, he would make more even after inflation than Copeland. The contract also permits five weeks of vacation, 12 days of sick leave, and $500 for a car each month.<\/p>\n The big salaries don\u2019t stop at the top. <\/p>\n Robin Klaibe, principal at Belmont Hills Elementary that has 344 students, made $164,816 from December 2024 to December 2025. Lauren Hopkins, assistant principal at Lower Merion High School, received $167,386 in salary and $11,926 in payouts for unused vacation payouts. Her colleague, Karen deFranco, made $172,201 in 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 Those salaries put Lower Merion\u2019s administrators in elite company. The median pay for school administrators was nearly $104,000 in 2024, accordi<\/a>ng to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics<\/a>. <\/p>\n Ranelli\u2019s salary was less than that of Philadelphia\u2019s superintendent, Tony Watlington, who earned $367,500. Yet Lower Merion has just 8,500 students compared to Philadelphia\u2019s 198,000<\/a>. <\/p>\n One education scholar noted that high salaries for administrators don\u2019t necessarily translate into high student test scores. <\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re spending more than their peers, and not all their schools are high performing, though they\u2019re all pretty high,\u201d Marguerite Roza, a research professor at Georgetown University\u2019s Edunomics Lab, told The Center Square. <\/p>\n Former Lower Merion superintendent Dr. Christopher W. McGinley said the salaries are not unusual in some districts. <\/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. \u201cThat salary range could be very appropriate compensation.\u201d <\/p>\n Education experts say the district\u2019s high salaries are mainly a function of its wealth. <\/p>\n \u201cOur experience is that school districts spend what they can,\u201d Roza said. \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 <\/p>\n In Pennsylvania, Lower Merion spent the seventh-most per student in the state. Eighty-four percent or $31,000 came from local funding, chiefly from property taxes, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. By contrast, Philadelphia spent $24,744 per pupil, $10,000 of which came from local sources. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen a school district has substantially 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 Those high salaries also continue because of the lack of a sustained taxpayer\u2019s backlash.<\/p>\n In 2016, Lower Merion residents Philip Browndies and Catherine Marchand, along with attorney Arthur Alan Wolk, filed a class-action lawsuit<\/a> challenging the school district\u2019s 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 In December 2024, Lower Merion commissioners approved a 6.5% increase in <\/a>local property<\/a> taxes \u2014 the first boost since 2011. Homeowners of a typical house worth<\/a> $287,600 in 2025 saw their property taxes rise $122 a year, from $1,283 to $1,405.<\/p>\n Seeking to stem further tax hikes, four Republicans ran for seats on the nine-member school board on a platform of fiscal accountability in November. \u201cWe deserve transparency,\u201d they wrote on their Facebook page. \u201cJoin us to demand answers and more accountability.\u201d <\/p>\n In the heavily Democratic township, each of the four Republicans lost decidedly. None 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 additional 3.5% hike on property taxes for next school year to fill a $9.5 million budget gap. <\/p>\n