"The average elementary school teacher in Nassau and Suffolk counties earned $90,560, while middle school teachers earned $90,650 and high school teachers earned slightly less on average at $88,390."
But if you think you can apply for and get one of those jobs, that's not how it works! Most openings are filled though nepotism. They'll have a few candidates come in for interviews, but they already know who is getting the job. And it's the niece of a school board member or something like that.
For context, Nassau and Suffolk are the highest paid area in New York at ~100k mean salary. That's below the median household income in Nassau ($115k) and Suffolk ($101k) [0], which are among the richest in the US. NYC and the US are both at ~$63k median income.
For comparison, NYC is ~$80k mean salary, which will include both new hires and tenured teachers. If you read the salary schedule[10] for NYC, you have to have 6-8 years of experience to make $80k (depends on your education level [11]). To reach $120k, they must have 20 years of tenure in the NYC school district.
I made $90k in salary alone as a new CS grad, and $120k in total comp (excl. benefits). This doesn't seem like a huge overpayment to me. It makes sense to me that wealthier areas pay teachers more, and I don't think that teachers getting well paid in one county should demand wage cuts in other counties.
IMO school boards & school district admin generally are a badly under-appreciated source of corruption of many kinds. I'm pretty damn sure it's rampant.
Seriously, my spouse is a teacher, we need to move wherever this is yesterday.
... of course, I'm sure that both of: 1) they'll need to attain a PhD first, to have a shot at those numbers, and 2) this'll turn out to be somewhere with double or more the cost-of-living of where we are now, and probably 5x or more like-for-like housing costs.
