Who are SC’s highest-paid public school administrators? Check out our salary database
A few months ago, The State reported on a Midlands charter school principal with a salary nearly double that of his local peers and on par with South Carolina’s highest-paid superintendents.
It got us thinking, how did the $322,545 salary of Brian Newsome, the principal of Gray Collegiate Academy in West Columbia, compare to other principals across the state? Were there other school leaders making similar amounts or was his salary a true outlier?
To answer that question, we submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the S.C. Department of Education, which tracks the salaries of administrators in all 80 of the state’s public school districts.
The response came back recently, with the salaries of more than 1,300 South Carolina principals and 76 superintendents, current as of the beginning of the school year.
A small number of administrators were excluded from the list — fewer than 20, according to an Education department spokesman — because the exact compensation of public employees who make less than $50,000 is exempt from disclosure.
Newsome, it turns out, makes $107,000 more than any other public school principal in South Carolina, and more than two-and-a-half times the average principal in the state.
In fact, only two superintendents — Charter Institute at Erskine CEO Cameron Runyan, the highest-paid K-12 public school superintendent in South Carolina, and Greenville County Superintendent William Royster — make more than Newsome.
Both oversee districts with dozens of schools and tens of thousands of students.
Gray Collegiate, by comparison, had 930 students at the end of last school year. It added a satellite campus in Irmo this fall that was expected to enroll about 600 students.
Three other charter school leaders, in addition to Newsome, are among South Carolina’s 11 highest-paid principals, according to state data. The other top earners work in large school districts within the Charleston metropolitan area, known for its higher-than-average cost of living.
South Carolina superintendent salaries tend to track with district size and location.
The state’s top-paid superintendents all work for districts with at least 11,000 students — South Carolina’s average school district size is just under 10,000 students — that draw primarily from urban and suburban areas.
After the three top earners (Runyan, Royster and Charleston County’s Anita Huggins), who each make more than $320,000, no superintendent makes more than $291,000, according to state data.
With salaries just under $232,000, York 2 Superintendent Sheila Quinn, hired in 2018, and Clarendon County Superintendent Shawn Johnson, hired in 2021, are the highest-paid small district leaders in the state.
Clover School District, as York 2 is commonly known, finished last year with just under 9,000 students, and Clarendon had about 4,100 students.
Oconee County’s Scott Mercer, who makes $184,000, is the only superintendent in South Carolina who leads a larger-than-average district on a below-average salary. (The average superintendent salary in South Carolina is $199,000, according to state data.)
Mercer, who retired as superintendent of Spartanburg 2 in 2018, was hired as Oconee County’s interim superintendent in July. The Upstate district had just under 10,000 students at the end of last year.
Four districts — York 3, Sumter, Greenwood 52 and Fairfield — did not report superintendent salary data. All but Greenwood 52 hired new superintendents earlier this year.
The leaders of the four largest local districts — Richland 1, Richland 2, Lexington 1 and Lexington-Richland 5 — all make between $235,000 and $241,000, according to state data.
Lexington 2, Lexington 3 and Lexington 4, which are all on the smaller side, pay their superintendents less than $200,000 each.
Average principal salaries in the area’s seven school districts don’t match student enrollment quite as neatly.
Lexington 4, a 3,400-student district with a single middle and high school, pays its seven principals above the state average of $118,000, while Lexington-Richland 5, which enrolled 17,000 students last year, pays its school leaders less than the state average and all but one local district.
Akil Ross, the superintendent of Lexington-Richland 5, is the single highest-paid employee in any of the seven local districts. He makes $240,675, according to state data.
Searchable salary database
This story was originally published November 6, 2025 at 11:21 AM.