At least 63 employees of public charter schools in New Orleans made more than $100,000 in 2013-14, according to federal tax forms for the most recent year with comprehensive numbers. Four employees were paid more than $200,000.

New Orleans had 75 charter schools that year. Among the highlights of a NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune analysis of salary data:

• Kathy Riedlinger, the city's top-paid public education leader for several years, made $262,778 for running the 1,700-student Lusher Charter, an A-graded school
• Ben Franklin High Principal Timothy Rusnak was paid $227,835. Franklin had 878 students and the highest performance score in Louisiana
• Christine Mitchell made $179,341 as principal and chief executive of McDonogh City Park Academy, a 447-student, D-graded elementary-middle school
• Marvin Thompson's salary was $145,000 at John McDonogh High, subject of an unscripted television series that called it "the most dangerous school in America." The 311-student school was given one of the lowest grades in the state that year and relinquished its charter in 2015.

The news outlet's database comprises the leader of every charter organization in the city and all employees reported on tax forms as making $100,000 or more. They include both salary and other compensation.

The database is not complete: Edgar Harney Charter's tax form did not list employees, and Mary Coghill Charter and Robert Russa Moton Charter did not file tax forms that year. However, Moton's leader earned the same salary the year before and the year after. Milestone Academy and Crescent Leadership Academy paid for-profit management companies to run the schools, and those salaries are not in the public record.

Meanwhile, the average teacher in a New Orleans public school made about $40,000 to $53,000, according to school audits. 

How we got here

School salaries spiked after Hurricane Katrina turned New Orleans' unified public school system inside out and upside down in 2005. The Louisiana Recovery School District seized most of the schools from Orleans Parish and converted them into semi-independent charters run by non-profit boards. Labor union contracts all but disappeared.

As a result, salaries of school leaders rose dramatically. Operators of charter schools -- using taxpayer dollars and often grants, with their hands untied -- entered the market, paying top dollar for what they considered the best talent.

The numbers surprised readers of The Times-Picayune in 2009. Adjusting for inflation, they've gone higher still.

Mardele Early, leader of Lake Forest Charter, received the equivalent of a $71,000 raise. Rusnak's pay increased by more than $65,000. Sean Wilson of the International School made almost twice as much in 2013 as his predecessor did in 2008.

"With charters, it's what the market can bear," said Brian Riedlinger, director of the School Leadership Center (Kathy Riedlinger is his former wife). Experienced, well-liked and successful leaders might be able to ask for a lot, "like NFL free agents."

Do they deserve it?

There are factors that argue in favor of the high pay:

• More responsibilities -- Brian Riedlinger echoed a common line of argument among charter supporters. Charter school leaders do more than conventional principals who rely on support from a big central office, and thus they deserve more money.

• Less retirement benefits -- The low pre-Katrina salaries hid a lucrative future payoff: a guaranteed, hefty pension. But today, only about 48 percent of New Orleans charters participate in the state pension plan, according to Tina Chong, spokeswoman for the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools. The rest opt for private retirement accounts where benefits rise or fall according to investment performance.

• Organizational expansion -- Some raises corresponded to growth in the organization. Accounting for inflation, Rhonda Kalifey-Aluise of KIPP New Orleans received a $44,000 raise from 2008 to 2013, to reach $152,565. In the same time, her network grew from five to nine schools.

But top pay at some schools went down, particularly when personnel changed. Marc Merriman made the equivalent of about $92,000 to run Charles Drew Elementary in 2008, for example. After it was chartered as Arise Academy, new leader Andrew Shahan made $64,249.

It's hard to assess the true cost of running New Orleans charters without looking at the overall size of each organization's central office. Some top salaries worked out to be relative bargains. The six-school Algiers Charter network had the third-highest-paid executive in the city, but it reported only one other employee making more than $100,000, for more than 4,000 students.

On the other hand, the ReNEW network had seven employees who made six figures, for 3,307 students in four elementary schools and two small alternative high schools. And Lagniappe Academies' top three administrators were paid a total of $366,337 to run a single 162-student school. Lagniappe received hefty financial support from its board chair's foundation, which is fortunate, as those three administrator salaries would have consumed more than one quarter of the school's tax revenue.

The state closed Lagniappe in 2015, citing widespread special education abuses and questionable testing practices.

Is it really that high?

Is New Orleans out of line? A search for comparisons shows that conventional school systems pay their leaders big money, too:

• High salaries abounded among the candidates who submitted résumés for the Orleans Parish superintendency in 2013 through 2015. For instance, the leader of an 856-student system in a tiny Tennessee county said he made $150,000 in 2013.

• According to an analysis by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, in one Philadelphia suburb -- not an affluent one -- more than 150 central-office employees made $100,000 or more.

• In Nashville, Tenn., this year, the principal of a conventional school could make more than $120,000, according to the school system's website.

• For that matter, Anthony Amato, the last permanent Orleans Parish schools superintendent before Katrina, would still have out-earned all the charter leaders in 2013-14. He made $230,000, or $280,000 in 2013 dollars.

Despite New Orleans' unusual arrangement of two school systems with many charters, Harvard University education professor Susan Johnson suspects their leaders' pay is not out of line. "I think that these salaries are probably comparable to those of other cities," she said. 

Also typical, she said, is "the gap between the teachers' and principal's salaries." Most charters employ less-experienced teachers, who typically draw lower salaries, Johnson said.

Still, she said it was difficult to make an apples-to-apples comparison to other cities, "largely because the responsibilities of these administrators vary so much."

Priorities

Brian Riedlinger made almost $200,000 in 2009 when he ran the Algiers Charter School Association. On the whole, he said, he does not think New Orleans' salaries are too high.

He said New Orleans teachers should make $60,000 to $70,000, principals about $100,000. For charter chief executives, he said, $150,000 makes sense, depending on the leader's responsibilities and the number of students.

"There is an argument to be made, bigger-picture, that educators' salaries are too low to begin with," Riedlinger said. "If education is really the common denominator, and most educators believe it is, then don't we need to be paying the folks that spend so much time with our kids more money?"