Union Combined Superintendent / Principal Position

Background memo for the superintendent-pay comparison. Union — the smallest school district in Connecticut (~45 students, one schoolhouse) — is a structural oddball of a different kind than Chaplin: instead of sharing a superintendent across districts, it combines the superintendent and elementary-principal roles in one person, Steven J. Jackopsic, under two companion contracts. The contracts state separate salaries for the two roles but give no breakdown of hours between them, so the comparison table needs an FTE-equivalent superintendent salary constructed from the stated figures plus one assumption. This memo documents the contract facts (verified by OCR of the clerk-supplied documents), the construction method, the numbers, and the caveats, so the report can be updated consistently.

Bottom line

For 2025-26 Union pays Jackopsic $128,419 as principal plus a $10,701 addendum for serving as superintendent, plus a $400-biweekly stipend in lieu of health insurance ($10,400/yr) and a board-paid tax-sheltered-annuity contribution of 10% of salary/stipend ($14,952). Cash for the combined position: ~$154,072 on the default accounting here, which excludes the stipend as an insurance substitute (see below); ~$164,472 with it.

Splitting the combined pay into role shares using the market ratio of superintendent to elementary-principal pay in Union’s enrollment class (r = 1.44, from the 2025-26 AASA salary study) implies the superintendent role occupies about 5.5% of the position’s time and that the FTE-equivalent superintendent salary is roughly $217,000 on the default accounting (about $231,000 if the stipend is counted as cash) — squarely in the peer set’s range (per-district total-cash FTE-equivalent mean $217,222, median $202,400). Union belongs in the report as a reference entry, not a ranked row: the FTE figure is a modeled construct, unlike the contract-stated dollars behind every ranked district.

The arrangement

One person, one district, two employment instruments:

• Principal’s Contract & Annual Salary Agreement. A “continuing contract” notice (the classic teacher-tenure form) stating the annual principal salary for three years, the biweekly stipend, and the benefits. Work year: 210 days, 10 of which may be worked from home. The role includes serving as “service administrator in the provision of special education services PreK through grade 12.”
• Agreement for Superintendent of Schools. A separate three-year agreement under CGS § 10-157 adding superintendent duties “in addition to performing his duties as Principal,” with additional compensation “added to his base salary as Principal.” Contains its own extension procedure (never more than three years committed at a time), CABE-based evaluation, and termination provisions.

Jackopsic has served as part-time superintendent since July 1, 2020 under a Memorandum of Agreement dated May 13, 2020 (referenced in the contract recitals; the MOA itself is not in hand). The board rolls the paired contracts forward annually: we hold both the 2025-2028 pair (voted May 14, 2025 — the operative document for the 2025-26 comparison year) and the 2026-2029 successor pair (voted May 13, 2026).

Contract figures (verified by OCR)

From the 2025-2028 documents, with the 2028-29 column from the 2026-2029 successor (overlapping years are identical across the two documents):

Two structural observations:

• The 2025-26 supe addendum is exactly one-twelfth of the principal salary ($128,419 / 12 = $10,701.58, floored) — the board appears to have priced the superintendent role at one month of principal pay — and it then steps 3.0% annually, slightly decoupling from the principal salary (2.5% step in 2026-27).
• The stipend is paid “in lieu of health insurance benefits … biweekly beginning July 1” — i.e., year-round biweekly, which at the standard 26 pay periods gives $10,400 for 2025-26. It rises steeply ($400 → $550 → $650) because it substitutes for a benefit whose cost is rising.

Other benefits stated: term life insurance ($75,000 face), annual TSA contribution of 10% of salary/stipend (the 2026-2029 version reads “TSA contribution and/or CHET contribution for total of 10% of salary/stipend”), and sick/personal/bereavement days.

What counts as cash compensation

Under the study’s methodology (cash = base + board-paid annuity + longevity

• fixed transportation allowance + other lump sums; health insurance value excluded):

The stipend is genuine cash on the paycheck, which argues for inclusion; but it substitutes for health insurance, which the methodology excludes for every peer district. Counting it makes Union look relatively better paid than a peer whose (excluded) insurance premium the board pays directly. The default accounting therefore excludes the stipend, matching the methodology’s treatment of the peers’ health benefits; the with-stipend variant is shown alongside in the results. (The TSA stays in either way: it is board-paid annuity money, though its contractual 10% base does include the stipend.)

The TSA contribution comes straight from the contract’s benefits sentence and is the same species of board-paid 403(b)/annuity money that is counted for every other district (e.g., Andover’s $10,000). The 10% is assumed to apply to the full salary+stipend, including the supe addendum, since the supe agreement adds its compensation “to his base salary as Principal” (see caveats).

Method: splitting the combined pay into role shares

Assume the full-time market rates for the two roles stand in a ratio r (superintendent = r × principal). If h is the fraction of time spent on superintendent duties, the contract implies S* = h(rR) and P* = (1−h)R for a base rate R, where S* and P* are the role-attributed cash amounts. Solving:

h = S* / (S* + r P*)

and the FTE-equivalent full-time superintendent salary is:

FTE = S* / h = S* + r P*

A plain proportional split is the r = 1 special case; it would undersell the superintendent role and overstate its hours.

Components with no stated role split (the stipend and the TSA) are allocated in the same S:P proportion as the stated salaries (supe share 10,701 / 139,120 = 7.69%). Because those allocations are proportional, they scale all results uniformly and do not interact with the choice of r; the implied time split h is unaffected by them entirely.

Source for r

The 2025-2026 AASA Superintendent Salary & Benefits Study reports median salaries for superintendents and principals within the same enrollment bands, from the same respondents. Union falls in the under-300 band, and its principal role is an elementary principalship. Relevant medians:

The elementary-principal ratio in Union’s own size class, 1.44, is the value used. A side benefit of using a within-band ratio rather than the AASA salary levels: the two roles’ differing normal work years (a ~210-day principal year vs. a 12-month superintendent year) are already embedded in the ratio, so no separate work-year adjustment is needed.

Citation: Tienken, C. H., Timmer, J., Kang, L., Cronin, S., Thomas, T., Pasuit, J., Rizzi, B., & Yang, T. (2026, February). 2025-2026 AASA superintendent salary and benefit study. American Association of School Administrators. Tables 2.1 and 2.9 (public non-member edition, aasa.org).

Results

At r = 1.44, the implied time split is h = 5.47% superintendent time under every component treatment (proportional allocations cancel out of h). The FTE-equivalent superintendent salary by treatment:

Sensitivity is linear in r: each 0.1 of r moves the default figure by 0.1 × P-share ≈ $14,200 (≈ $15,200 for the with-stipend variant):

A plain proportional split (r = 1) would give $154,072 on the default basis ($164,472 with the stipend) and 7.7% supe time.

Cross-check against the peer set

Against the study’s compensation dataset (snapshot of 2026-07-08; 41 ranked district rows, joint contracts counted once per district):

(Counting each joint contract once instead of per-district: mean $206,435, median $195,620.)

Two points of support:

• The ratio-method results land within a few percent of the peer averages on a like-for-like basis: the default construct $216,649 vs. total-cash mean $217,222 (within 0.3%); salary-only $195,624 vs. base-only mean $198,740 (−2%); the with-stipend variant $231,273 vs. total-cash mean (+6%). The convergence is principled, not lucky: the method carries Union’s own pay level through, and Union pays in the same compressed Connecticut market as the peers.
• An independent second estimate is available by benchmarking directly: assume a full-time Union superintendent would earn the peer median and back out the time split. On the default basis, h = 11,851 / 202,400 = 5.9%; on a salary-only basis, h = 10,701 / 195,000 = 5.5%. The two routes agree with the ratio method (5.5%) within half a percentage point on the time split.

The flat salary-vs-enrollment relationship in the peer set (Pearson r = 0.14 across the 38 ranked rows with enrollment data) is what licenses comparing 45-student Union against the whole peer set at all — but it is partly restriction of range, since all the peers are small districts.

Presentation in the main report

Union appears as a reference entry (like Chaplin/RD 11, Amity Region 5, and Region 7): the combined position’s cash is contract-verified, but the FTE-equivalent superintendent figure rests on a modeled ratio, unlike the contract-stated dollars behind the ranked rows. The FTE-equivalent is reported as roughly $217,000 on the default accounting (salary + TSA, with the in-lieu-of-insurance stipend excluded to match the methodology’s exclusion of peers’ health benefits), noting that counting the stipend raises it to about $231,000 — with both derivations (ratio method and peer-median benchmark) noted, letting the agreement between them carry the argument. The implied ~5.5% superintendent time share — about 11–12 days a year at a 210-day work year — is itself a striking, easily-quoted fact for the smallest district in the state.

Caveats

• The AASA study is a self-selected national sample (1,951 responses, 21 from Connecticut) that AASA labels descriptive rather than representative. Its under-300 band is 94% rural nationally. These concerns bear on salary levels far more than on the within-district ratio, which is the only quantity borrowed from it.
• AASA principal salaries are superintendents’ estimates of their district’s figures, not payroll records. In districts this small the estimate is likely accurate.
• The FTE figure is a construct: what Union would pay a full-time superintendent at its own salary scale. It should not be framed as an estimate of what Union would actually offer to hire a standalone superintendent.
• 26-pay stipend assumption: the contract says the stipend is payable “biweekly beginning July 1” across a July 1–June 30 year, which is 26 pay periods in a standard year; the contract does not state a count, and an occasional fiscal year contains a 27th biweekly payday. If the stipend were instead paid only over the school year (21–22 pays), the 2025-26 stipend would be $8,400–$8,800; the with-stipend variant would fall by roughly $1,300–$1,700, and the default figure by only ~$250 (through the TSA’s salary/stipend base).
• TSA base ambiguity: the 10% TSA contribution appears in the principal’s contract (“10% of salary/stipend”). We assume the base includes the supe addendum, since the supe agreement adds its compensation “to his base salary as Principal.” If the TSA is computed on the principal salary + stipend only, the 2025-26 TSA is $13,882 (not $14,952) and the full-cash FTE figure drops by about $1,600.
• The stipend substitutes for health insurance, which the methodology excludes for peers — which is why the default accounting excludes it. The treatment matrix above shows the figure both ways; be explicit about which is used wherever the number is quoted.
• Peer statistics move as contracts continue to arrive; the cross-check should be recomputed from the current dataset rather than quoted from this memo’s snapshot.

Sources

Primary documents

• Combined 2025-2028 document (Principal’s Contract & Annual Salary Agreement, continuing contract dated May 14, 2025, + Agreement for Superintendent of Schools, July 1, 2025 – June 30, 2028; board vote May 14, 2025; signed by Jackopsic and BOE Chairperson Andrea Estell). Scanned PDF, OCR’d; supplied by the Union town clerk in response to a §10-244c records request, received July 15, 2026. Copy on the contracts subpage.
• Successor 2026-2029 pair (same two instruments, July 1, 2026 – June 30, 2029; board vote May 13, 2026; signed 5/13/26). Scanned PDF, OCR’d; received July 14, 2026. On file in the project archive.
• Memorandum of Agreement dated May 13, 2020 establishing the part-time superintendent arrangement — referenced in both agreements’ recitals, not in hand.

Benchmark and peer data

• Tienken, C. H., Timmer, J., Kang, L., Cronin, S., Thomas, T., Pasuit, J., Rizzi, B., & Yang, T. (2026, February). 2025-2026 AASA superintendent salary and benefit study. American Association of School Administrators, Tables 2.1 and 2.9 (public non-member edition, aasa.org).
• Peer statistics computed from the study’s compensation dataset — see the contracts subpage and component spreadsheet.