Somerville Teacher Salaries: How Do They Compare?
WBUR created a map showing how average teacher salaries compare across Massachusetts.
WBUR created a map showing how average teacher salaries compare across Massachusetts, and the Somerville Public Schools' average K-12 teacher salary was itself about average when compared to the city's neighbors in the region.
Matt Wilder, Boston Public Schools' director of media relations, pointed out that WBUR used outdated numbers from the 2008-2009 school year in creating their map, so the chart below uses newer numbers from the 2009-2010 school year.
The average teacher salary in Somerville was $67,772, according those numbers, which come from Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education website. That means Somerville teachers were paid a little more than most of their colleagues in neighboring communities, but not by much. The salaries range from $60,168 in Stoneham to $84,894 in Boston.
On the WBUR map, the darker the city or town, the higher the average salary. The map can be viewed for elementary teacher salaries (red), middle school salaries (green) and high school salaries (blue).
Below is a chart using the most recent numbers, from the 2009-2010 school year and on the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education website, showing the average teacher salary by community in ascending order along with the municipality's expenditure per pupil from the '08-'09 school year, taken from WBUR's map.
| City/Town | Average Salary | Expenditure Per Pupil |
| Stoneham | $60,168 | $11,400 |
| Reading | $60,300 | $10,742 |
| Arlington | $61,757 | $11,813 |
| Melrose | $62,225 | $10,288 |
| Saugus | $62,266 | $11,079 |
| Wilmington | $63,209 | $11,436 |
| North Reading | $63,262 | $10,888 |
| Wakefield | $64,041 | $11,299 |
| Woburn | $65,282 | $13,909 |
| Somerville | $67,772 | $16,219 |
| Winchester | $68,908 | $11,373 |
| Medford | $68,929 | $13,269 |
| Lynnfield | $72,682 | $10,600 |
| Malden | $73,203 | $12,798 |
| Cambridge | $77,380 | $26,337 |
| Boston | $84,894 | $17,900 |
cp kostos
11:33 am on Friday, June 1, 2012
Why is Cambridge student expenditure so high? Their high school graduation rate is dismal as well as the percentage of students who enter college. Cambridge needs to examine this statistic.
Somerville Home Owner
12:17 pm on Friday, June 1, 2012
often school systems with the most challenging set of students spend more per pupil than avg, but academic stats are worse than average. That is true of Cambridge. Then add the fact that Cambridge is a rich city and are probably spending a lot more on "stuff". (I don't know what "stuff" is)