When very generous health benefits and good pension benefits are factored in, that doesn’t look to be true in the state’s second largest county. Here are some of the findings about San Diego County, as reported by the U-T:

More than 7,500 school district employees in San Diego County received six-figure compensation packages last year, including 4,600 teachers. …

More than 1,300 San Diego Unified teachers also received six-figure compensation packages.

About 570 Sweetwater [Union High School District] teachers received more than $100,000 in compensation.

About 390 Oceanside [Unified] teachers received $100,000 or more, data shows.

The data shows that 359 teachers in the Poway district also received six-figure compensation in 2013.

Poway’s highest paid teacher … has her masters degree and teaches regular and A.P. U.S. History at Rancho Bernardo High, as well as civics and U.S. History for Poway’s online school. After 24 years in the district, [her] total compensation topped $132,130, including $22,106 in benefits, according to the data.

Negative correlation between $100k employees, district quality?

What’s particularly striking about the data is how the best school system isn’t remotely the one with the most high earners. Poway Unified — which has 35,000 students in a mostly upper-middle class district ranging from 4S Ranch in San Diego County to the city Poway to San Diego communities Rancho Bernardo, Poway, Scripps Ranch and Rancho Penasquitos — is widely considered one of the best medium-sized school districts in the nation.

But Poway has fewer $100,000 earners than Oceanside, which is much smaller with an enrollment of 21,200, and far fewer than Sweetwater, which is slightly bigger with a 40,900 students. Neither Oceanside or Sweetwater has a reputation even close to Poway’s.

There may be no conclusion to be drawn from this. But from talking to active parents in Poway Unified, one theory is quite plausible: a school that’s well-run on the academic side is likely to be well-run on the finance side, because they’re so interconnected. Poway Unified pays enough to avoid faculty turnover and resists pressure for unnecessary raises.

The budget figures back this up. In 2013, compensation for Poway Unified employees took up 84 percent of the operating budget. In San Diego Unified, compensation costs were a stunning 92 percent of the operating budget.

That’s a pretty intriguing theory to contemplate: that there is a negative correlation between percentage of teachers earning $100,000 in compensation and a school district’s quality.

By Chris Reed

My five-month-old crusade to get the California mainstream media to acknowledge the insanity of “construction bonds” which take 30 years to pay off being used routinely by school districts for short-lived electronics and basic maintenance hasn’t gotten far yet. The most significant article from a respected mainstream education reporter about this outrage came in December from John Fensterwald in EdSource. State newspapers’ education reporters? They can’t be bothered.

Yes, the California media do care about nutty capital appreciation bonds, which can’t be prepaid and delay initial repayments for 20 years out, leading to such ridiculousness as the Poway Unified school district borrowing $105 million that will take $981 million to repay — beginning two decades from now. But the problem of using 30-year borrowing for short-term needs is much worse than CABs. It’s far more common; it’s everywhere.

Maybe what the Los Angeles Unified school board did Wednesday finally will give this issue the attention it deserves:

“During the … meeting, the board also approved {Superintendent John] Deasy’s proposal to spend millions to supply every student and teacher with a tablet computer by 2014. …

“Deasy’s plan to supply all 650,000 students in the district with a tablet computer by 2014 will ultimately cost $500 million. The tablets are supposed to support the transition to Common Core Standards. They are being paid for by revenues raised for school construction bonds R, Y, and Q, which voters approved to address ‘unmet facilities needs.’

“Several school principals spoke during the meeting about a spike in math and English test scores after incorporating tablet apps into their lesson plans.

“Gina Russell-Williams, principal at Curtiss Middle School, said the tablets would help her teachers provide additional intervention and tutorial services to students. Other teachers said teaching students on tablets would allow them to compete with wealthier, smaller, private schools.

“Board member Bennett Kayser abstained from the vote, saying in a statement after the meeting that the process should be slowed down and studied further. No one voted against the measure.”

Is giving kids quality high-tech devices to assist in their education a good idea? Of course.

Is giving kids quality high-tech devices to assist in their education a good idea if bonds to pay for the devices are still being paid off in 2043 — decades after the devices stopped being usable? Of course not. That’s grotesquely irresponsible.

If CEOs did what superintendents did, they’d be in jail

But what would be criminal or subject to shareholder lawsuits in the private sector is just fine in the corrupt world of public education.

The L.A. school board’s actions confirm what I heretofore will refer to as Reed’s Law: Whether in the Legislature or in local school districts, the top priority is always freeing up or increasing revenue to allow tenured teachers to receive the automatic “step” raises that typically are provided for 15 of their first 20 years on the job — just for showing up.

That’s why we see lies about attendance and property tax receipts. That’s why we see grotesque bond abuses. It’s all about preserving the pay status quo for veteran teachers. Understand this, and California politics becomes demystified and uncomplicated.

It’s not “all about the kids.” It’s all about the veteran teachers.

Maybe L.A. Unified spending a half-billion dollars over the next 30 years on iPads that will be broken or stolen by 2016 will finally hammer this home.

By Chris Reed

There are none so blind as those who will not see. EdSource does a 1,500-word analysis of a new study showing far higher turnover of superintendents in large school districts than smaller ones in California, discusses several theories, but never even mentions the fact that teacher union power is particularly extreme in big school districts — and teacher unions are fickle, demanding, hard-to-please masters.

In Los Angeles Unified, it took a judge’s ruling to get the union-dominated district to begin obeying a 1971 state law requiring that teacher evaluations include student performance.

In San Diego Unified, the state’s second largest district after L.A., employee compensation — primarily teacher salaries — consumes 93 percent of the operating budget. And that’s after the school board mustered the will to bargain to delay a 7 percent raise that all represented employees were supposed to get this school year. I’ve actually seen San Diego Unified documents that project employee compensation in coming years would top 100 percent of the operating budget.

Which is a mathematical impossibility.

Meanwhile, in the adjacent, much smaller, Poway Unified district, the union has much less clout, and the compensation chunk of the operating budget is only 85 percent.

In San Diego Unified, there have been three superintendents in four years, and the latest is a figurehead — a former admiral hired because the local union knew he knew his place. In Poway Unified, the superintendent is an aggressive, take-charge guy with job security.

Still wonder why big districts have more turnover of superintendents, EdSource?

Of course, EdSource is in good company. In 2009, The New York Times wrote 8,000 words about California’s dysfunction that ignored public employee union power, which remains incredible to this day. Given where this state was in 2009, that may never be topped.