by Lexi Churchill, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, and Ellis Simani, ProPublica

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This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

Texas lawmakers and an advocacy group representing charter schools harshly criticized a tiny charter school network that has paid its superintendent up to $870,000 annually, making him one of the highest-paid public school leaders in the country.

The criticism came after ProPublica and the Texas Tribune published a story last week about Valere Public Schools, revealing that the district had only reported paying its superintendent, Salvador Cavazos, less than $300,000 per year. In fact, bonuses and one-time payments roughly tripled his income for running a district that has fewer than 1,000 students across three campuses.

Lawmakers brought up the story during a critical Texas House of Representatives committee hearing on March 6 to discuss how much funding the state should provide traditional public and charter schools in the coming years. Legislators repeatedly pressed Bryce Adams, the vice president of government affairs for the Texas Public Charter Schools Association, about Cavazos’ compensation and asked why charter schools need additional state funding if they use it for high administrator pay.

“You got a report in The Texas Tribune today about one of your guys making $800,000 a year,” said State Rep. John Bryant, a........

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