Part 2 of 8 in The Office That Tripled

How did SDP's C-suite grow from 5 to 53?

Five in 2014-15. Fifty-three in 2025-26. SDP didn't pay people more — it created more positions. The C-suite tier grew 10.6x in eleven years, and the largest single share of that growth is a layer of Assistant Superintendents in the District's 15 Learning Networks. This isn't a story about overpaid individuals. It's a story about a layer that grew.

Total C-suite tier payroll: $1,035,000 in 2014-15 to $10,987,388 in 2025-26. The 10.6x growth in dollars matches the 10.6x growth in headcount. The per-position cost stayed essentially flat — about $207,000 in both years.

This piece is the first in a new series, the roster-side companion to an earlier analysis of SDP's central-office growth. I want to be clear about what I'm doing here and what I'm not: the roster tells me how many of these positions exist, what they pay, and how the picture has changed — not what the people in them do in schools. I worked from the earlier piece's 56% number on the budget side; I'm here for the 195% on the roster side. Both numbers are right. They measure different units. The 195% vs 56% gap is the reason this series exists.

How did the C-suite's makeup change?

The composition of the 53 shifted in a way that matters. In 2014-15, the C-suite tier was concentrated in Cabinet-level Chief positions: 3 of the 5 were Chief titles. There were zero Assistant Superintendents above the line. One Deputy. One Other senior director.

In 2025-26, the largest single category in that tier is Assistant Superintendents — 19 of the 53. The layer existed in 2014-15 too, but at $145,000 a head, well under the $175K line this piece draws. Its pay crossed the line in 2022-23, at $179,686, and it has held between 13 and 20 positions ever since. Chief positions grew over the same eleven years, from 3 to 14. Deputy positions went from 1 to 11.

Most of the growth is recent. The tier held between 3 and 11 positions for the first eight years of the dataset. Then it climbed to 30 in 2022-23, 38 in 2023-24, 47 in 2024-25, and 53 in 2025-26. The largest single-year increase is 2021-22 → 2022-23 — 19 positions, 13 of them Learning Network Assistant Superintendents clearing $175,000 for the first time. The Learning Networks themselves were created in 2017-18.

The most recent year is the quiet one. Between 2024-25 and 2025-26 the tier added six positions, and the Assistant Superintendent layer went from 20 to 19 — an Assistant Superintendent for Student Life, at $195,087, sits on the 2024-25 roster and is gone from the 2025-26 one. The growth in this tier is a decade-long story, not a last-year one.

Where are the 19 Assistant Superintendents?

Of the 19 Assistant Superintendents, 15 sit inside the District's 15 Learning Networks — one per LN. (Learning Network 8 also carries a contracted AS billed through a vendor, not the SDP roster; the contracted position isn't in the 53.) Each LN is a geographic cluster of schools that share instructional leadership. The Learning Network structure was created in 2017-18, and the Network Assistant Superintendents first cleared $175,000 in 2022-23.

Four more AS positions sit outside the Networks. The salary band is standardized: 17 of the 19 earn $197,302, with Dropout Prevention at $197,226 and LN 15 at $205,297. The four non-LN positions — Early Childhood Education, Dropout Prevention, Division of College Readiness, and Office of School Organization and Management — earn essentially the same as the Network roles.

Total Assistant Superintendent payroll: about $3.76M per year across the 19 roster positions. That's roughly a third of the $11M C-suite tier, in line with its 36% share of the headcount. It is the single largest payroll slice in the bucket.

Did SDP add positions, or raise pay?

Average annualized pay across the four categories is essentially flat — $197,719 for Assistant Superintendents, $197,737 for Deputy, $218,759 for Chief, $221,445 for Other senior director. The range across the four buckets is about $23,700. That's narrow enough that you can talk about the $175K+ tier as a single compensation band, not four distinct ones.

The Chief and Other senior director averages sit a little higher because each category contains a few senior positions — General Counsel in the Chief category, executive-level directors in the Other senior director category. The Deputy and Assistant Superintendent averages are within $20 of each other. The Assistant Superintendent layer was built at the same per-head pay as the existing Deputy tier. SDP didn't create a new, higher-paid layer. It created a new layer at the going rate.

This is why the 10.6x growth in tier headcount tracks the 10.6x growth in tier payroll almost exactly. The per-position average went from $207,000 in 2014-15 to $207,310 in 2025-26. The growth is people, not pay.

Why does the roster say 195% and the budget say 56%?

Two numbers have been circulating for SDP's central-office growth. The Commonwealth Foundation says 56% — measured from the District's Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, a financial roll-up of administrative dollars. SDP's own position roster says 195% — measured from the quarterly employee file, position by position. Both numbers are correct. They measure different units.

The CAFR describes the budget line that most closely resembles administration. The roster describes every central office position SDP employs. CF's 56% is the cleaner number for how the budget has changed as a line item. The 195% is the cleaner number for how the central office has changed as a workforce. They're not in conflict. They're measuring different units.

What this can't tell you

The 53 is positions, not people. A vacant post counts the same as a filled one, and the roster tells me how many funded positions exist — not how many people actually show up. The contracted LN 8 Assistant Superintendent isn't in the 53; other contracted positions might not be either.

The 2022-23 step — 19 positions in a single year, 13 of them Learning Network Assistant Superintendents crossing $175,000 for the first time — could reflect normal catch-up after pandemic-era understaffing, or it could be the structural problem this article is claiming. The roster can't pick between those readings. Nor can it tell you whether the flat 2025-26 figure is restraint or a pause.

A fixed dollar threshold across eleven years is doing some of the work here. $175,000 stays put while the pay scale rises beneath it, so positions cross the line without anything changing about the job. Indexed to inflation the same series reads 3.8x rather than 10.6x; measured against the top 0.5% of all SDP salaries it reads 2.2x. The tier grew on every one of those measures. How much depends on which line you draw.

Where should the 2026-27 cuts land?

The 10.6x growth in tier headcount over eleven years isn't a story about overpaid individuals. It's a story about a layer that sat well below this threshold in 2014-15 and is now comfortably above it. The Learning Networks brought most of it. The C-suite payroll grew because the C-suite grew, not because individual paychecks grew.

Nineteen Assistant Superintendents at $197K each, plus LN 15 at $205K — that's the $3.76M layer, the largest single slice of the $11M tier. It is also the one part of the tier that did not grow last year. Whatever the 2026-27 cuts do to it, the case has to rest on the decade, not on last year’s roster.

Notes, Sources, and Methodology

The 53 is every salaried central office employee in SDP's quarterly position roster earning $175,000 or more. That's the natural break between director-level and senior management in the District's pay structure. Salaried only, because the District's hourly payroll uses a 1,800-hour annualization that would push part-time lunch-aide roles into seven-figure territory and wreck the comparison across years.

The four composition categories — Chief, Deputy, Assistant Superintendent, Other senior director — come from the wording in each title. The 19 Assistant Superintendents split into 15 Learning Network roles (one per LN) and four outside the Networks: Early Childhood Education, Dropout Prevention, the Division of College Readiness, and the Office of School Organization and Management. Learning Network 8 also has a contracted Assistant Superintendent billed through a vendor, not the District roster; that role is excluded from the 53. Seventeen of the 19 earn $197,302; Dropout Prevention earns $197,226 and Learning Network 15 earns $205,297.

The Learning Networks count as central office in every year here. They are administrative units that supervise clusters of schools rather than schools themselves, and the District's own file classifies them as administrative from 2025-26 onward.

Corrected 27 August 2026. The chart and the surrounding figures for 2022-23, 2023-24 and 2024-25 were revised upward. The District reformatted its employee file in 2025-26, renaming both the organization codes and the job titles, and my original script read the two vintages inconsistently: it dropped the Learning Network Assistant Superintendents from the earlier years and filed five more of them under “Other senior director” because that year’s file abbreviated the title. The tier totals for those three years were 17, 25 and 32; they are 30, 38 and 47. The Assistant Superintendent layer crossed $175,000 in 2022-23, not 2025-26, and it went from 20 positions to 19 in the most recent year rather than from 0 to 19. The 2014-15 and 2025-26 endpoints, and so the 5 → 53 and 10.6x figures, are unchanged. An earlier version of this piece described the layer as new in 2025-26 and closed by arguing the cuts should land on it for that reason.

The 195% central-office figure here comes from the position roster; the 56% figure comes from the Commonwealth Foundation's analysis of the District's Comprehensive Annual Financial Report — the budget-line view of administration. Both are correct; they measure different things, the roster-side workforce and the budget-side spending line. This piece is the roster-side companion to the earlier analysis.