California Schools Chief Tony Thurmond Has a $200,000 Salary — and a Side Gig

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State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond has regularly taken side jobs running Bay Area nonprofits during his tenure as California’s elected schools chief, earning tens of thousands of dollars to supplement his income, financial disclosures show.

Thurmond has reported working part-time for four different nonprofits since he was elected superintendent of public instruction in 2018 — most recently as director of the Berkeley Food Pantry, for which he earned between $10,001 and $100,000 last year, according to his statement of economic interests.

The arrangement is not illegal under California law, but it is highly unusual for someone holding statewide elected office. Ten other people have served as statewide constitutional officers during Thurmond’s six years as superintendent of public instruction. None of them reported compensation from an outside job that they worked during their time in office, though several had considerable investments or other secondary income streams.

And on at least two occasions, Thurmond solicited a major contribution for a nonprofit that was paying him from a person or company with business before the state — including once last year using a connection that he made through the superintendent of public instruction’s office.

Thurmond, who is running for governor in 2026, told CalMatters in an interview that he needed the additional income to support his children and several other family members with illnesses whom he is caring for. He said the annual salary for the superintendent of public instruction — which was $203,343 last year and increased to $210,460 in December — is lower than that in some other states and local school districts.

“I have needs that are beyond what the salary is able to provide,” he said. “Even as an elected official with a good job, I have needs. I have two children I’m responsible for, including paying for their education and housing costs.”

Thurmond said the side jobs had no impact on his work as superintendent of public instruction, a nonpartisan office that oversees the California Department of Education and leads the State Board of Education. He said none of the money he raised for the nonprofits paid for his own salary.

“There’s no conflict there. I’m not getting any personal benefit or political benefit,” he said. “I fail to see what conflict of interest there could be.”

‘Isn’t being an elected official a full-time job?’

Thurmond began his career in social services and nonprofit management, and he continued to serve as the senior director of community and government relations for the Oakland-based anti-poverty organization Lincoln Families after he was elected to the state Assembly in 2014. State legislators received a $97,197 salary and a $168 daily allowance while in session at that time.

Since entering the superintendent of public instruction’s office in 2019, he has cumulatively reported earning between $33,506 and $331,000 from outside work on financial disclosure forms, which only provide a range for income. In addition to his work with the Berkeley Food Pantry, this includes stints as interim part-time managing director of homeless services for the socially conscious San Francisco performing arts company Anne Bluethenthal and Dancers; as interim executive director of Worksafe, an Oakland-based organization that advocates for worker health and safety; and as development manager for the San Francisco Study Center, which provides technical assistance to nonprofits.

Nothing in state law prevents public officials from also holding private employment, though they are prohibited from making governmental decisions that would affect their own financial interests.

But Sean McMorris of California Common Cause, a nonprofit that advocates for governance in the public interest, said it’s so rare among statewide elected officials because it raises other ethical questions about how politicians are splitting their time and whether they merely have been hired for access to their political contacts.

“When are you doing it on the side? Isn’t being an elected official a full-time job? So how do you parse that out?” said McMorris, who is transparency, ethics, and accountability program manager for California Common Cause. “That’s why they get paid a salary.”

Thurmond said his outside work was no different than when he was a part-time local elected official — he served on the Richmond City Council and the West Contra Costa Unified School District board before he ran for the Assembly — and had to work a full-time job to support himself. He said he had chosen to take outside work in the nonprofit sector, rather than at a private company, “because I want to still feel like I’m making a difference.”

“Maybe one day the voters will choose to remunerate elected officials at a higher level,” he said, adding, “I’m not complaining. People are working two or three jobs to make ends meet.”

His job with the Berkeley Food Pantry began in November 2023 and ran through June 2024, Thurmond said. He said he earned $40 per hour working between 10 and 15 hours per week, totaling about $25,000.

“It’s almost always something that I did on weekends and evenings,” he said. “I’ve given the superintendent job full-time and more, every week and every day.”

Thurmond said he had not taken any additional outside jobs since he stopped working for the Berkeley Food Pantry last June.

“At the end of the day, I think they wanted somebody who was able to help them in a full-time way,” he said. “It’s hard to find the balance of something that can be supplemental and part-time and on the side.”

The Berkeley Food Pantry did not respond to messages asking to discuss Thurmond’s employment with the organization.

Only one other statewide elected official has reported a side job on their statement of economic interests in the past six years, according to a CalMatters review.

Attorney General Rob Bonta earned between $1,001 and $10,000 working as an adjunct professor at Oakland’s Mills College in 2021. Spokesperson Bethany Lesser said Bonta taught a class before he was appointed attorney general in March 2021, when he was still a member of the Assembly.

Nevertheless, some of California’s constitutional officers do earn substantial supplemental incomes.

Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, the daughter of Sacramento real estate developer Angelo Tsakolopous, makes hundreds of thousands of dollars or more annually from her ownership stakes in grazing lands, orchards, solar fields and office buildings, many of which are rented out to interest groups that lobby the state. She is also running for governor.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has a wine and entertainment empire that he placed in a blind trust before taking office in 2019. He has also reported receiving four book advances of between $10,001 and $100,000 in the past five years. Since last summer, he has launched two podcasts with the iHeartMedia network, for which he is reportedly not being paid but which have nevertheless generated criticisms over potential conflicts of interest and distractions from his day job.

Thurmond directed donations to his employers

Over the past three years, Thurmond has also sought at least two donations to nonprofits where he was working at the time.

Officials in California can legally ask for contributions to nonprofits that employ them, their family or their staff members, as long as they disclose that connection when reporting the payment.

The state refers to these contributions as behested payments, meaning a donation made at the request of a public official. They must be reported to the state within 30 days when a source provides more than $5,000 in a single year.

McMorris of California Common Cause said that has created a loophole for politicians and special interest groups to potentially engage in influence peddling and purchasing.

“The problem with behested payments is that they are basically unregulated, except for disclosure,” he said. “It’s certainly a gray area that’s become more and more exploited.”

Last March, Thurmond solicited a $10,000 contribution to the Berkeley Food Pantry from Tim Ranzetta, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur behind a 2024 ballot measure to add a financial literacy graduation requirement in California.

Ranzetta runs a nonprofit, Next Gen Personal Finance, that provides free curriculum and teacher training for personal finance courses. He has successfully lobbied dozens of states to add financial literacy requirements for high school students, from which he says he does not earn any money.

According to behested payment records, the donation was made the same day that Thurmond hosted a panel discussion featuring Ranzetta, where Thurmond announced his support for Assembly Bill 2927, a legislative measure to require personal finance classes for California high schoolers by 2031. The bill quickly became law, allowing Ranzetta to pull his initiative from the November ballot. His organization remains engaged with the State Board of Education as it creates the curriculum guidelines.

Thurmond said he asked for the money from Ranzetta in his role as a nonprofit executive, not as superintendent of public instruction, but was still required to report it as a behested payment. The form cites “food delivery to community in need” as the purpose of the donation, but does not mention Thurmond’s employment with the food pantry.

He said the timing was purely coincidental and, as with all of the money that he has raised for the nonprofits he worked for, it did not go to his salary.

“None of those contributions came back to me directly,” Thurmond said. “In each of those positions, my salary was fully funded.”

Ranzetta said he developed a relationship with Thurmond starting in August 2022, as his nonprofit began providing grants to California school districts to increase access to personal finance courses. That continued through both legislative and initiative efforts to make it a statewide requirement.

When Thurmond contacted him in March 2024 “about a nonprofit with which he was involved called the Berkeley Food Pantry,” Ranzetta wrote in an email, he was happy to donate to what seemed like a good cause, “consistent with my experience with other individuals I respect contacting me about charities which they think have merit.”

He said it did not come up in their conversation whether Thurmond was asking for the money as superintendent of public instruction or an employee of the Berkeley Food Pantry. Ranzetta was not aware that Thurmond was then working as the director of the food pantry and received a salary.

“To me, it was like anyone else I knew who called about a charity she or he supported,” Ranzetta wrote.

Four months later, Thurmond received a warning (PDF) from the Fair Political Practices Commission for failing to report on time a November 2022 behested payment from Pacific Gas and Electric Company.

According to the records, PG&E gave $10,000 at Thurmond’s request to Josie’s Place, a grief support program run by the San Francisco Study Center, where he was then working as the development manager. Thurmond finally reported the donation in February 2024, stating that, “No portion of funds will be used to compensate SPI Thurmond or any other employee of Josie’s Place per the grant restrictions.”

Thurmond told CalMatters that he did not approach PG&E as superintendent of public instruction, but rather filled out an application for one of its grant programs, which he said did not have his name on it.

Lynsey Paulo, a spokesperson for PG&E, refused to confirm that account or whether PG&E knew that Thurmond was being paid by the San Francisco Study Center at the time.

“We followed our charitable contribution process. We reviewed the request and we reported the payment in 2022,” Paulo said in a statement.

Thurmond said he has reported all of the money he raised for the nonprofits that he worked for during his tenure as superintendent of public instruction and there are no additional behested payments, even if they did not meet the $5,000 threshold. He said, “I go out of my way to make sure there are no conflicts” with his outside work.

“I’m honored that I get to be in a position to support our state and support important charities,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed being a public servant for 17 years, and everything I’ve done is above board.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.