NYC private school teachers make up to $17,000 less than parents pay in tuition per pupil

Some teachers are making less than their students are paying in tuition at tony New York City private schools.A Post investigation revealed that, at some of the city’s best private K-12 schools, a full time teacher can make more than $17,000 less than their own students’ parents pay for them to attend Kindergarten.Meanwhile the schools sit on massive endowments and often pay their heads of school more than $1 million.“I was very stressed about money when I lived in New York,” Blythe Grossberg, a former teacher at the ritzy Upper West all-boys school Collegiate, told The Post.

“It was almost impossible to live on my salary in New York.Like, there was absolutely no way it could be done.”At Collegiate, a lower school substitute teacher could make no more than $50 an hour and as little as $25 — less than Mayor Mamdani was paying emergency snow shovelers this winter.

Tuition is $68,900.Grossberg, a Harvard-educated learning specialist with a doctorate, says she started at $55,000 when she worked at elite NYC prep schools including Collegiate and Packer Collegiate Institute from 2005 to 2018 — hardly enough to get by in the city, especially because she has a son with autism who requires services.“I basically was tutoring around the clock just to pay the mortgage slash rent slash expenses,” she recalled.

“[My colleagues] were always either tutoring or working in summer school.They had all kinds of side gigs.” But not everyone.

Grossberg realized that many of her colleagues could get by, thanks to their own privilege.“I think the dirty little secret, at least in my experience, is that a lot of the teachers also went to private school, so some of them have trust funds, basically,” she said.“And then, it’s helpful if they have a very rich spouse.For those without a rich spouse or family money, the salaries can be rough — and totally incongruous with the wealth that fills NYC private schools.At Riverdale Country School in the Bronx, stud...