Superintendent Joe Gothard’s total compensation will jump by 17 percent next year under a new three-year contract unanimously approved Tuesday by the St. Paul school board.
The contract, which is Gothard’s third since he was hired in 2017, includes built-in annual raises for the first time, plus escalating incentives to keep him from leaving for another job.
His base salary will be $256,000 next year, up from $240,000 each of the last three years. And a new clause in the contract will pay him an extra $19,840 in salary on top of that — an amount equal to the employee-paid portion of the district’s pension plan, which is 7.75 percent of his base salary.
In addition, the district’s annual contribution to Gothard’s 403(b) retirement plan will increase by $10,000 next year, to $19,000.
There’s also a new longevity incentive that will fund a supplemental retirement plan, which Gothard gets only if he’s still on the job when the contract expires after the 2025-26 school year. It will be worth 5 percent of his base salary next year, or $12,800, then 7 percent and 10 percent in the next two years.
And Gothard will be able to convert to cash as many as 20 days of vacation each year, up from 10 days under his old contract.
His expense account of $9,600 per year is unchanged.
However, Gothard is giving up medical benefits, which the district says are worth $19,500 a year.
All told, that’s $336,940 in total compensation next year, which is an increase of $48,990 over this year.
With 2 percent annual salary increases and escalating retirement contributions, he’s due to receive $348,329 in 2024-25, and then $362,714 in his ninth year as superintendent.
Those calculations do not include the value of life and disability insurance benefits.
‘Highly effective’
School board members announced in August that they would seek to negotiate a new contract with Gothard, who they rated “highly effective” on his latest performance review.
Board member Jessica Kopp on Tuesday said the board’s support for keeping Gothard as superintendent is “underpinned primarily by a desire for continuity as we emerge from two-plus years of disrupted learning, uneven social connection and increased uncertainty.”
Kopp added that board members believe in Gothard’s ability to “make progress on current initiatives and to lead St. Paul Public Schools into a bright and beautiful future.”
Board chairman Jim Vue said the contract is “less about past production and more about future returns.”
The new contract comes in a year of significant change for the district, which closed five schools this fall, opened a Hmong studies middle school and a career center, and reconfigured high school schedules. One constant for the district, even before Gothard took over, has been yearly declines in enrollment, which this year fell again to a preliminary 32,149, including preschool.
Gothard, 51, previously was superintendent of the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage school district.
He said Tuesday that effecting change in such a large school district “takes time, and that was true even before the pandemic, and our challenges continue to be numerous.”
Comparable to Minnetonka
Last school year, Gothard’s $240,000 salary ranked second in the state among school district superintendents, according to data kept by the Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board.
Only Minnetonka, the state’s 13th-largest school district, with about one-third as many students as St. Paul, paid more for its superintendent, Dennis Peterson. Peterson retired at the end of last year and was replaced by David Law, who had led Anoka-Hennepin, the state’s largest district.
Law’s contract with Minnetonka appears comparable to Gothard’s new one. He has a salary of $275,000 — but no annual increases — and gets $50,000 a year in retirement contributions and auto allowance. Law also could earn a performance bonus each year worth up to 20 percent of his salary.
Clarification: This article has been updated to reflect the value of medical benefits that Superintendent Joe Gothard is giving up in his new contract.