Best school superintendents deserve pay

I read with interest your article about school Superintendent Carole Hankin's pay ["Syosset residents defend superintendent pay," News, March 8]. To those who complain about high superintendent pay, do you not realize that you get what you pay for? Do you really believe that these systems would run as effectively and successfully as they do with lower-paid, less capable senior managers?

Or do you think that you somehow get the same quality at lower pay? Why do you think that companies like Apple, Disney and IBM are what they are? Maybe people like Steve Jobs, Michael Eisner and Louis Gerstner, with all of their (appropriately) high pay levels, had just a little something to do with it?

The demagoguery of suggesting that, because someone gets a lot of money, there has necessarily been overspending and waste, and that taxpayers have somehow necessarily been abused, is a distracting and dangerous approach. The word "taxpayer" is used by some as a term with virtually religious overtones, where the pointing out of a payment at their expense is viewed as an intrinsic sin. To the contrary, many dedicated and capable people are not evil, bad or wrongheaded for making a lot of money. They're successful, and should be congratulated rather than denigrated for their success.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's one-size-fits-all approach, which would result in blanket caps without regard to individual circumstances, will have unintended consequences involving the very diminution in the quality of education that we're supposedly trying to avoid.

Andrew Oringer

Syosset