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Superintendent’s Pay

By law, each district must report the salaries, employee benefits and other compensation for superintendents and other top officials. Here are the top paid superintendents for 2004-05.

LI superintendent gets state’s biggest pension

As a retired Long Island school administrator, James Hunderfund enjoys a special distinction. He collects the largest public pension in New York — $316,245 a year.

Hunderfund, 64, retired as superintendent from the Commack school district in August 2006, after 37 years in the system. In September 2007, he went to work as the superintendent of the Malverne school district, which has about 1,655 students. There, he collects about $200,000 a year in salary, according to state records. Altogether, Hunderfund is paid more than $500,000 a year.

In an interview, Hunderfund said he deserves the compensation, saying, “I think I earned every dollar I received.” To receive that pension, he said he followed the rules allowed by the state.

The practice of retired school administrators earning second paychecks in school districts is not unusual on Long Island — there are at least 39 retired central office administrators working in schools. But Hunderfund’s half-million-dollar compensation package stands out, even in a region where school superintendents enjoy some of the highest salaries in the nation.

The size of his pension stunned several national pension experts.

‘Pretty spectacular’

“I have never heard of one of that magnitude,” said Steven Frates, president of the Center for Government Analysis, an Irvine, Calif.-based company that researches pensions. “That’s pretty spectacular.”

Just how Hunderfund did it provides a window into New York’s generous pension system and the arcane rules that govern how payments are determined. For example, as he turns 65 this year, he is not subject to the state-mandated income cap of $30,000 for the interim paycheck — a school district can pay him what it wants.

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