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OT-SOAK TEACHERS UP THEIR PAY GRADE

Who says teachers can’t live the good life?

Some have been capitalizing on bountiful overtime gigs in the city’s school system, managing to push their annual earnings up to $150,000 — and beyond.

In addition to after-school, summer-school and coaching gigs, these teachers double as everything from budget managers to general helping hands to pad their base salaries by as much as $60,000 in one year.

The top earners rake in more than $42,500 in overtime annually. Compare that to the more typical $3,545 in overtime — doled out in straight pay — earned by the average teacher in fiscal year 2008.

Peter Bencivenga, a computer-science teacher at the HS of Telecommunication Arts & Technology, led the charge in OT last year by hauling in more than $60,000 extra developing a data-analysis system used by 26 schools.

The computer whiz, whose base salary is around $81,000, logged nearly 1,500 hours, an average of 30 extra hours a week, perfecting his pet project.

“This was an immense amount of work,” said Phil Weinberg, principal at Telecom HS in Brooklyn, where Bencivenga works. “Peter’s efforts helped many schools make significant advances.”

Nick Ragusa coached track and handball at Chelsea Career & Technical Education HS and taught evening classes at another Manhattan school to rake in a total of $152,050 in 2007-08.

With a base salary of $100,000, Ragusa was the highest-earning teacher that year — with a total take-home equivalent to the salary of the highest-paid school principal, according to Department of Education records.

William Melhado, the lone middle-school teacher to make the Top 10 list of highest earners, told officials he was pulling extra duty as the coordinator of the track, summer-meal and testing programs in his Brooklyn district for the sake of his family.

The IS 291 teacher took in more than $49,000 in OT on top of his $94,000 salary, working a total of 1,230 hours last year.

“He said he’s working a lot because he wants to send his daughter to an Ivy League school,” said a Department of Education spokeswoman.

The hourly OT wage, which is governed by the teachers-union contract, rose from $40 to $42 an hour last year.

Because of a 2002 teachers-union court victory, the money counts as salary when calculating pension — which is derived from a teacher’s average earnings during his or her final three years.

Other unions have managed to boost members’ pensions significantly through end-of-career OT. For example, firefighters who retired last year saw an average 16 percent hike in their pensions.

Additional reporting by Chuck Bennett

yoav.gonen@nypost.com