Despite tax revolt, Lower Merion keeps administrator pay high

Despite a $27 million settlement with taxpayers in 2022, Lower Merion School District continues to pay top-tier salaries to administrators.Assistant high school principals in the affluent Philadelphia suburb earn nearly $170,000 a year, while the superintendent makes nearly $300,000, according to an investigation by The Center Square. These high salaries endured because of a strong property tax base and the absence of a sustained taxpayer backlash. A revolt began in 2016 over a proposal by school district officials to raise property taxes amid accusations that officials hid budget surpluses. It culminated in June 2022 with a class-action settlement that returned $27 million to taxpayers. While school district officials denied wrongdoing, the settlement provided $15 million to taxpayers who lived in Lower Merion as of August 2016, along with $4 million installments paid in 2023, 2024, and 2025. In April 2025, the district hired a new superintendent, Dr. Frank Ranelli, giving him a five-year contract valued at $1.5 million. His starting annual salary was $290,000. After inflation, that was lower than the $240,000 given to superintendent Robert Copeland in 2015.Yet the contract was more generous in key areas. The Center Square obtained records under Pennsylvania's right-to-know law that show Ranelli's deal includes a 2% annual pay increase — higher than the 1.5% annual increase given to Copeland in 2015. If Ranelli receives another five-year deal, he would make more even after inflation than Copeland. The contract also permits five weeks of vacation, 12 days of sick leave, and $500 for a car each month.The big salaries don't stop at the top. Robin Klaibe, principal at Belmont Hills Elementary that has 344 students, made $164,816 from December 2024 to December 2025. Lauren Hopkins, assistant principal at Lower Merion High School, received $167,386 in salary and $11,926 in payouts for unused vacation payouts. Her colleague, Karen deFranco, made $172,201 in base pay. Hopkins and deFranco were two of the four assistant principals at the school of 1,720 students, perhaps best known as the alma mater of the late basketball great Kobe Bryant. Elite company Those salaries put Lower Merion's administrators in elite company. The median pay for school administrators was nearly $104,000 in 2024, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Ranelli's salary was less than that of Philadelphia's superintendent, Tony Watlington, who earned $367,500. Yet Lower Merion has just 8,500 students compared to Philadelphia's 198,000. One education scholar noted that high salaries for administrators don't necessarily translate into high student test scores. "They're spending more than their peers, and not all their schools are high performing, though they're all pretty high," Marguerite Roza, a research professor at Georgetown University's Edunomics Lab, told The Center Square. Former Lower Merion superintendent Dr. Christopher W. McGinley said the salaries are not unusual in some districts. "I am not sure where assistant principal salaries are in that range, but there are places where that title is used, but the individual may have all of the same responsibilities as a building principal does," he said in an interview. "That salary range could be very appropriate compensation." Education experts say the district's high salaries are mainly a function of its wealth. "Our experience is that school districts spend what they can," Roza said. "Most of that money, more than $35,000 per kid, is locally raised, and some taxpayers will pay for that. We see the same thing in the Chicago suburbs." In Pennsylvania, Lower Merion spent the seventh-most per student in the state. Eighty-four percent or $31,000 came from local funding, chiefly from property taxes, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. By contrast, Philadelphia spent $24,744 per pupil, $10,000 of which came from local sources. "When a school district has substantially more revenue per student, there is more available to pay for everything, including administrator pay, " said Molly Pileggi, a scholar at Research Action, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit research group, in an interview with The Center Square. The undoing of a revolt Those high salaries also continue because of the lack of a sustained taxpayer's backlash.In 2016, Lower Merion residents Philip Browndies and Catherine Marchand, along with attorney Arthur Alan Wolk, filed a class-action lawsuit challenging the school district's planned 4.4% property tax hike for the 2016-17 school year—the case that would lead to the $27 million settlement in 2022. That increase is significantly less than what local officials have approved not once but twice in the past 18 months. Wolk did not return two calls for comment. In December 2024, Lower Merion commissioners approved a 6.5% increase in local property taxes — the first boost since 2011. Homeowners of a typical house worth $287,600 in 2025 saw their property taxes rise $122 a year, from $1,283 to $1,405. Seeking to stem further tax hikes, four Republicans ran for seats on the nine-member school board on a platform of fiscal accountability in November. "We deserve transparency," they wrote on their Facebook page. "Join us to demand answers and more accountability." In the heavily Democratic township, each of the four Republicans lost decidedly. None of their publicly listed telephone numbers were active.In December, Lower Merion commissioners approved an additional 8% hike in property taxes, down from the initial proposal of 9.5%.Then in January, the school board floated an additional 3.5% hike on property taxes for next school year to fill a $9.5 million budget gap. Montgomery County, which includes Lower Merion Township, has the second-highest median property taxes in Pennsylvania, at $5,009, according to the state's Independent Fiscal Office in January.