FLINT, Mich. – When releasing employee payroll information to the public, school districts tend to only include base salary figures.

But the heavy expense often comes in the form of benefits – particularly retirement pension costs. The proof is in the payroll numbers from the Flint, Michigan school district.

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In the 2016-17 fiscal year, the Flint district paid 32 administrators a total of $2,409,305.60 in base salary, for an average salary of $77,790 per employee.

That’s good money, but actually pretty modest compared to what many school districts across the nation pay their top employees.

But the labor costs for those administrators grew significantly when retirement costs were included.

The Flint school district paid a total of $912,081.57 on behalf of those same employees in retirement benefits in 2016-17. That averaged out to a whopping $28,502 per employee for one year of work.

Suddenly, the average cost of employing those administrators jumped from $77,790 to $106,292. When you add in the rest of the benefits and social security costs, that average increased to $122,911 per employee – a full $45,121 more than the average base compensation.

The second largest benefit expense for the school administrators was health insurance, which cost the district $288,191.20, for an average of $12,001 per employee. But that doesn’t total even half of what the district had to fork out for retirement.

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One might expect officials to figure out a better system, to make sure that far more money is spent on students, and far less is put aside to cover the golden parachute retirement plan for top employees.