How much do they make? Rhode Island municipal and school salaries in 2022

Wheeler Cowperthwaite, The Providence Journal
Updated ·8 min read

How much did they make?

That's the question we hope to answer for Rhode Island's six biggest municipalities, as well as their school departments. To do it, we have requested salary data from all the municipalities and schools.

Below you will find insights, and links, to the various stories on municipal, state and school salaries we have compiled, along with the databases so you can search the payroll yourself.

These salaries stories are part of a series by The Providence Journal. Stories and databases will cover municipal payroll and school payroll in Providence, East Providence, Pawtucket, Woonsocket and Warwick.

But it's not just municipalities as we have stories on the top 100 state employees, the top 100 state pensions and and the list of non-union state employees who received $3,000 bonuses in 2022 and their salaries.

Most of our salary stories, and access to the salary databases, requires a subscription.Here's our latest offer.

Municipal salaries

Firefighters and police officers usually dominate the lists of highest paid employees in cities and towns, but how much they got paid, how much overtime and detail pay, shifts depending on the municipality.

Providence

One Providence firefighter earned more in overtime, $175,446, than any one municipal or school employee in the other communities surveyed as a part of this analysis.

Fire Rescue Lt. Joseph Burke's gross, $265,346, was also the highest in Providence in 2022. In all, 16 people made $200,000 or more in 2022. See our full story (subscription required) on Providence's salaries in 2022.

Search our database of Providence salaries.

East Providence

Our 2022 look at municipal salaries started with East Providence, where firefighters topped the list of the top 10 and top 100, with pay mostly boosted by overtime.

Lots and lots of overtime, including 19 people who made more in overtime than they did in their base pay. In those 19 (16 firefighters, three police officers), overtime ranged from $73,951 to $128,516. See our full story (subscription required) on East Providence's salaries in 2022.

Search our database of East Providence salaries.

Cranston

Firefighters dominated the list of Cranston's top employees, with huge amounts of overtime, with all six firefighters on the list of top 10 earning more in overtime than their base salaries.

In Cranston, the accounting software is so old that detail and overtime pay can't be exported as a spreadsheet, instead, only as a PDF, so we only looked at detail and overtime pay for the top 10 employees. See our full story on the City of Cranston salaries here.

View, search or sort the full database of the 2022 City of Cranston salaries.

Pawtucket

Unlike the Pawtucket Schools (see below), the City of Pawtucket counted 683 people on its payroll, less than half that of the school district, with a similarly lower total payout of $44.6 million

It should come as no surprise that in Pawtucket, the people who topped the salary list were police officers and firefighters. Seven out of the top 10 overtime earners were police officers, but firefighters earned most of the city's overtime pay. See our full story on the City of Pawtucket salaries here.

View, search or sort the full database of the 2022 City of Pawtucket salaries.

Warwick

With 954 people on the payroll, 27 people made more than $150,000 in 2022 in Warwick. Like most of cities, firefighters were the top overtime earners, accounting for 68% of the total overtime earned.

The highest paid? Police Capt. James Valkoun ($187,696 gross), who had a $129,558 base wage that was supplemented by $58,090 in detail pay. See our full story on the City of Warwick salaries here.

View, search or sort the full database of the 2022 City of Warwick salaries.

School salaries

Usually, school payrolls, both in number of employees and the amount paid out, dwarf their municipal counterparts. While the city of Pawtucket paid 683 people, the Pawtucket school department counts 1,453 people on its payroll. The same big differences in numbers are true for other school districts and their municipal counterparts.

While the individual stories for each district are below, we also combined the data from all six districts to compare who was making the most overall. The result? Providence dominated the 75 of the top 100 highest paid spots across those school districts. See our full story on how the six school districts compare here.

View, search or sort the database of all six school districts combined.

Providence Public School District

While just one person cracked $200,000 at the Providence Public School District in the midst of its state takeover, Superintendent Javier Montañez, two thirds of teachers are at the top step of the union pay scale, putting their salaries above $80,000.

Employees making $80,000 or more, 1,546 people, represented 38% of the staff at the school district and 64% of the gross wages paid out. See our full story on the Providence Public School District's payroll in 2022 here.

View, search or sort the full database of the Providence Public School District salaries.

Cranston Public School District

One of the biggest government employers, Cranston has 1,975 people on its payroll in Fiscal Year 2022, with 48% of those people making $70,000 or more. The top 10 earners had a combined $1.4 million in gross wages, 1% of the total gross wages. See our full story on the Cranston Public School District's payroll in 2022 here.

View, search or sort the full database of the FY 2022 Cranston Public School District salaries.

East Providence School District

At the East Providence School District, most of the 937 people being paid last year, teachers, made at least $87,000, a result of a very experienced workforce at the top of the union pay scale. See our full story on the East Providence School District payroll in 2022 here.

View, search or sort the full database of the 2022 East Providence School District salaries.

Pawtucket School Department

With 1,453 people on the payroll, the Pawtucket School Department paid out $79 million in total wages in 2022, in addition to $31 million in benefits to its employees.

The number of employees making at least $100,000 in 2022 was 63 (4% of people on the payroll) while the number of people making $80,000 or more was 602 (41% of the payroll). See our full story on the Pawtucket School Department salaries here.

View, search or sort the full database of 2022 Pawtucket School Department salaries.

Warwick Public Schools

In Warwick, teachers make more than in other districts, as do teaching assistants, who are required to have associate's degrees.

While 2,498 people appeared on the payroll, people making between $100,000 and $90,000 represented 21% of the workforce while another 44% was made up by people who made less than $20,000. See our full story on the Warwick Public Schools here.

View, search or sort the full database of 2022 Warwick School Department salaries.

Woonsocket Education Department

In Woonsocket, a total of 1,113 people appeared on Woonsocket's payroll in Fiscal Year 2022. Of those, 291 (26% of the workforce) made less than $20,000 a year, including substitute teachers, "food service aids," custodians and teaching assistants.

View, search or sort the full database of 2022 Woonsocket Education Department salaries

Top state salaries, pensions and bonuses

$794,615 in eight months.

That's how much URI men's basketball couch Ryan "Archie" Miller made in 2022, making him the highest paid state employee, hardly surprising considering his five-year, $8.5 million contract signed in March 2022. But going further down the list, who were the top paid state employees in 2022?

Reporter Patrick Anderson breaks down the numbers in his story, including this tidbit: 159 state employees made $200,000 or more. Read his full story here or check out our database of the top 100 state employees in 2022.

State pensions are a sore point for retirees who want to get information from the state treasurer on why the R.I. pension fund's investment expenses skyrocketed from $46 million in 2012 to $187.8 million in 2021, before dropping to $166.7 million in 2022. See reporter Katherine Gregg's the full story on state pensions here.

We have a database of the 100 biggest pensions. Leading the list? Former Rhode Island Supreme Court Justice Gilbert V. Indeglia, who retired in June 2020. A judge in some capacity since 1989, he was appointed to the Supreme Court in 2000. His monthly take-home pension is $18,942, or $227,309 a year.

See the entire top 100 pensions database here.

'Retention' bonuses, including for lifetime appointments

A total of 579 $3,000 bonuses went out the door in 2022 to non-union state employees, including 60 with lifetime appointments as judges with six-figure salaries and, as Gregg reported, " a phalanx of politically connected magistrates with 10-year appointments in most cases."

See who got the bonuses, and how much they made or read Gregg's reporting on the bonuses.

Salaries in 2021

In 2021, we wrote about East Providence's salaries. Firefighter overtime went up in 2022, even though Fire Chief Glenn Quick said last year that it was supposed to go down as the department filled open positions. Quick did not respond to requests for comment on 2022's salaries.

Read about East Providence's 2021 salaries or search and sort the full 2021 East Providence salary database

In 2021, many Providence police officers and firefighters were able to double their regular pay through overtime, while the highest paid person was Capt. Luis San Lucas, who leads the Police Department’s traffic bureau and earned nearly $280,000, with $85,000 in overtime.

Read about Providence's 2021 salaries or view the 2021 Providence salary database.

See our full database offering

See our full offering of databases at databases.providencejournal.com or browse the individual databases linked below.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: See how much Rhode Island municipal, school employees made in 2022