A national report last week launched discussions about how much area high school teachers earn.
The story was headlined "The 25 worst-paying cities for high school teachers," and reported "Jefferson City, Mo.," as the nation's second worst. But it's not clear which schools were included in the data.
St. Joseph, the only other Missouri city listed, came in ninth from the bottom.
Jefferson City School District officials objected.
Chief Financial Officer Jason Hoffman told the News Tribune, "We offer one of the best, if not the best, salary and benefit packages in Mid-Missouri," and provided documentation supporting that argument.
The story said Jefferson City's "average high school teacher salary is $38,930," while the national average was reported as "$47,464, the average salary for all teaching jobs in 2012-2013 (the latest year for which data were available), according to the National Center for Education Statistics."
Hoffman provided information from the state Elementary and Secondary Education department showing the Jefferson City district's average high school teacher salary in 2015 was $47,899 - $8,969 higher than the number in the national report - and $435 higher than the national average listed in that report.
The DESE information said the teacher salary average really was $50,010 in 2015, when extended contracts and extra duty pay were included - $2,546 higher than the national report.
The initial, national story didn't identify the source of the study - but following links on an online version led to the original report on the website StartClass, which used research by the website Graphiq.
Graphiq still has not responded to a News Tribune question about how they reached their conclusions for the "25 worst-paying cities for high school teachers," but did say in an email on Friday that our request "has been marked as pending."
The StartClass/Graphiq report said it had "compiled all the public data available on educators' salaries and found the 25 cities where high school teachers received the lowest annual salaries in 2014, according to an update from the Bureau of Labor statistics in spring 2015."
But the BLS doesn't report statistics specific to Jefferson City.
Instead, using definitions from the federal Office of Management and Budget, the BLS reported data from the Jefferson City Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) - which includes all of Cole, Callaway, Moniteau and Osage counties.
That's an area that covers 2,257 square miles.
By comparison, Jefferson City (the municipality) covers 193.8 square miles in Cole and Callaway counties, while the Jefferson City Public Schools covers 225.18 square miles in the two counties.
The MSA includes 17 different public school districts with presumably the majority of those included in the StartClass/Graphiq report.