BALTIMORE (WBFF) — The Baltimore City Schools CEO is the highest-paid school district leader in the state, and her school system is among the lowest-performing in the country.
 

Dr. Sonja Santelises received nearly $450,000 in compensation last year, raising the question of whether taxpayers should be paying such a hefty price tag for a struggling school system.
 

Baltimore City Mayor Brandon Scott has been a strong supporter of the Baltimore City Schools CEO. He has celebrated Dr. Santelises and praised her for the job she’s done.
 

But Project Baltimore recently found taxpayers are paying her over $100,000 more than they may realize, even as student test scores drop to some of the lowest in the country.
 

During her last contract year, Dr. Santelises earned a base salary of $333,125, which for a school leader, is the highest in the state among the 24 public school districts. She makes about $150,000 more than the governor and $130,000 more than Mayor Scott.
 

She also gets a lot of perks. According to her contract, Dr. Santelises is given a $9,600 car allowance. She also gets $53,300 in “Deferred Compensation” towards retirement, which is in addition to her state pension. And the CEO is given 59 paid days off, which adds up to nearly 12 weeks.
 

During her last contract year, Dr. Santelises cashed out $48,750 in unused paid leave. Add that to the rest of her compensation, and she collected a total of $444,875.
 

Project Baltimore met up with Mayor Scott at a recent event to ask him whether taxpayers should be paying almost $450,000 for a school CEO.
 

“I’ll be very quick and very brief,” replied Scott. “Her compensation is like compensation for positions of hers across the country. What we cannot, and will not do in Baltimore, is allow our leaders, particularly black women in a country where we know that black women and women are historically underpaid when compared to their male counterparts; that is not something I will support. Full support. Thank you.”
 

“She’s in a tough position. But she was hired to do a tough job, and she’s got to do it,” Sean Kennedy from the Maryland Public Policy Institute told Project Baltimore. “If Santelises were worth her compensation, she’d be worth her weight in gold. Baltimore City desperately needs a leader who can turn it around. But managing the decline, or for that matter, mismanaging the decline, doesn’t justify an egregious amount of money.”
 

National test results, released last month, show Baltimore is among the lowest-performing large school systems in America. The math scores are the second lowest in the country.
 

Washington, DC, is just 38 miles from Baltimore. Both districts are similar in size and demographics, but student outcomes are different. According to the same national testing, DC students performed better during the pandemic than Baltimore in both math and English.
 

Yet, the Chancellor of DC public schools earns a base salary of $280,000, which is $53,125 less than Dr. Santelises.
 

“I don’t begrudge her one dime if she’s producing results, and she’s clearly not,” said Kennedy. “Baltimore City schools are worse than when she started.”
 

Dr. Santelises’s salary, and the perks included in her contract, are approved by the Baltimore City School Board.
 

Project Baltimore wanted to ask the board members whether taxpayers are getting a return on their investment, but the board would not agree to an interview.
 

Fox45 News sent the school board an email with six questions, including, “How can you justify a compensation package of nearly $445,000 for the leader of a school system that many consider to be failing?”
 

Since the CEO started in 2016, graduation rates, college enrollment, attendance and kindergarten readiness rates are all lower. We asked the school board, “Do you hold the CEO accountable for those results?”
 

We also asked about a recent report from the Inspector General for Education, which found City Schools improperly changed more than 12,000 failing grades to passing between 2016 and 2020.
 

The school board never responded to the emailed questions. A District spokesperson referred Fox45 News to a previous board statement that said, “Dr. Sonja Brookins Santelises has been an incredible champion for City Schools for nearly six years. Our CEO is worth every cent of her salary, aligning with her experience, skills, and education.”
 

“It’s not a matter of how much she gets paid,” said Kennedy. “If she does a good job. She deserves every penny. But she’s not doing that.”
 

According to the CEO’s contract, the school board must evaluate Dr. Santelises’s performance every year. Project Baltimore filed a public records request to see those evaluations, but the District denied our request, saying the CEO evaluations are personnel records. The public can’t see them.