Many taxpayers have seen little economic gain in recent years but the salaries of government education bureaucrats “have exploded” as the Sacramento Bee reports. Sarah Koligian of the Folsom Cordova Unified School District gets $240,000 and Christopher Hoffman of Elk Grove Unified bags $330,951, more than the $324,029 of Sacramento State University boss Robert Nelson. Next year it will balloon to$342,232,and the whopper salaries come with benefits such as car allowances, travel pay and such.

School board bosses try to make the case that the superintendents are like the CEOs of major corporations and should be compensated accordingly. The comparison might be valid if Costco got customers’ money even if they decided to shop at Walmart. A government bureaucracy with captive clients and guaranteed state funding is not equal to a corporation in any way. The huge salaries of bureaucrats, taxpayers should note, are not tied to any gains in student achievement, reductions in truancy, or savings in administrative costs. Instead, as we have noted, the huge salaries and outlandish raises are based on comparisons with other school districts. So no wonder the state sometimes fails to release salary information, even when requested to do so.

Government monopoly education is a collective farm of ignorance, mediocrity and failure. In this system, taxpayer dollars must trickle down through multiple layers of bureaucratic sediment. They money keeps coming, regardless of results and the biggest beneficiaries are superintendents, essentially bagmen and public relations specialists. Twin Rivers Unified boss Steve Martinez bagged raises of $25,000 in 2014 and $20,000 in 2015. That helped boost his 2013 salary by 43 percent to the current level of $308,112, and this year the district increased his retirement contribution from $7,500 to $21,000. Taxpayers remember, it’s all for the children.