The state education board is mulling pay raises for top-level Department of Education executives whose salaries have been frozen the past seven years, allowing their six-figure salaries to be surpassed by those of some school principals.

Schools Superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi said the salaries of her deputy superintendent, six assistant superintendents and 15 complex area superintendents have not been increased since 2006.

That’s in part because previously "their salaries were capped at 80 percent of the superintendent’s salary, so all complex area superintendents and assistant superintendents hit a certain number and then that was it, including the deputy (superintendent)," Matayoshi said Tuesday at a Board of Education meeting.

Matayoshi, who was hired in 2010, earns $150,000, the maximum allowed for the position under state law. Salaries of deputy, assistant and complex area superintendents are now set by the Board of Education but cannot exceed the superintendent’s pay. Although lawmakers lifted the 80-percent restriction in 2011, other economic factors have since kept executive salaries stagnant.

The assistant superintendents — who include the DOE’s chief officers in charge of fiscal services, human resources, instruction, strategic reform and information technology — earn $115,833 on average, according to the DOE. The complex area superintendents earn an average of $118,973.

Meanwhile, unionized school principals have seen net salary increases of about 10 percent over the same time period.

"The result has been that there are a number of principals who actually, in fact, exceed in salary the salaries of the complex area and assistant superintendents and, in fact, there are a few who exceed the salary of the superintendent," Matayoshi said.

The salary range for a DOE high school principal is $101,240 to $155,782, according to the department, with the average high school principal earning $124,535. Two principals currently earn more than Matayoshi.

Since 2006, school principals — who are represented by the Hawaii Government Employees Association — have received across-the-board increases totaling 11.5 percent and step increases equivalent to about a 3.6 percent hike, or about 15 percent total. Those increases were followed by furloughs between 2009 and 2011 that amounted to a 10 percent cut in pay, which was subsequently restored.

Principals then took a 5 percent pay cut in 2011 — which will be restored in July — resulting in a 10 percent net increase over the seven years that Matayoshi says senior management pay hasn’t moved. (DOE management also took a voluntary 5 percent pay cut over the past two years.)

BOE Vice Chairman Brian De Lima cited concerns about the differences negatively affecting recruitment.

"There isn’t pay equity among management-level positions versus field management positions," he said. "In order to recruit the best and the brightest, there needs to be pay equity."

Sen. Jill Tokuda, chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee, said executive compensation is especially important in light of the DOE’s aggressive education reforms and goals.

"We’re asking the department to go through some significant changes and it’s requiring different skill sets. It’s very demanding," said Tokuda (D, Kailua-Kaneohe). "It’s difficult to recruit and retain individuals when you’ve got a pay structure where you’re asking people to assume a leadership post where their subordinates will be making more than them."

The Board of Education didn’t take any formal action at its meeting, but BOE Chairman Don Horner said discussions on salary recommendations for senior management are ongoing.

"The board’s first task was to address the salary needs of our staff members," he said, referring to a new four-year contract for teachers that calls for annual raises of at least 3 percent. "We are now focusing our attention on salary recommendations for the management team. … Like the teachers’ agreement, we shall be discussing compensation that is linked to achieving the objectives of our strategic plan."

Tokuda said tying management pay to performance would send a positive message of top-down accountability.

"Just as they’ve made sure performance-based teacher evaluations and principal evaluations are in place, it would show that everyone is going to be held accountable and looked at in terms of how they’re contributing to moving the system foward and improving student achievement," she said.

Beyond the internal pay disparities, BOE member Jim Williams, chairman of the board’s Human Resources Committee, cited concerns about Hawaii’s executive salary lagging behind those of mainland school districts.

The average salary for a "big city" school superintendent was $239,000 in 2010, according to a Council of the Great City Schools survey the DOE presented to Williams’ committee Tuesday. Salaries ranged from $157,000 to $329,000, with more than half of the 56 school districts surveyed reporting superintendent salaries of $250,000 or more.

Several of the districts have far fewer students than Hawaii, including Atlanta, Boston, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Hawaii’s public schools enroll more than 180,000 students.

Williams requested national salary data for deputy and assistant superintendents. He also suggested the board might want to take up the $150,000 statutory cap with legislators, who set that amount in 2001.

Rep. Roy Takumi, chairman of the House Education Committee, who has introduced legislation in the past to boost the cap, said he’d be open to revisiting the superintendent’s pay. However, both he and Tokuda pointed out that lawmakers don’t set specific salaries for other public officials.

"I don’t know whether the Legislature should be the place to determine the superintendent’s salary," said Takumi (D, Pearl City-Waipio-Pearl Harbor). "What’s appropriate — is the superintendent equivalent to, say, the attorney general of the state or the dean of the medical school? When you look at the scope and responsibilities of the schools superintendent, it’s inexplicable."

He noted pay differences locally and nationally.

"The head librarian at (the University of Hawaii at Manoa) makes $150,000. The director of the aquarium, which falls under the university, makes $150,000. With all due respect to those positions, does the superintendent who runs the 11th-largest school district in the country deserve more?" Takumi said. "There are superintendents who run districts of 3,000 students — that’s just a little more than Farrington High School — and they make $180,000."

Tokuda said lawmakers might need to rethink the methodology for determining the superintendent’s salary.

"Should we just lift the cap," she said, "or change the methodology and maybe have a salary commission make recommendations?"