The North Little Rock School Board plans to buy out the last year of Superintendent Kelly Rodgers' three-year contract, board President Sandi Campbell said Thursday.
The board didn't discuss or make any decision on the appointment of an interim superintendent to fill Rodgers' position, she said.
Rodgers, 61, announced in March that he would retire at the end of the current school year, effective June 30, leaving with one year left on his three-year contract with the district.
Rodgers, who is completing his fifth year as superintendent, made the announcement after the School Board took no action after his job evaluation this year, nor after his January 2017 evaluation, to extend his contract to the maximum three years allowed by state law for a superintendent.
"We're going to buy him out," Campbell said Thursday about Rodgers' $185,000 a year salary. "It will go back to the lawyers for them to negotiate some more," she also said in a telephone interview after the board's regular monthly business meeting, which included an executive session about the buyout that was closed to the public.
The board then voted in public on the buyout, Rodgers said after the meeting.
Board member Darrell Montgomery was absent. Those present besides Campbell were Luke King, Tracy Steele, Dorothy Williams, Taniesha Richardson-Wiley and Cindy Temple.
School boards routinely add a year to a leader's contract for each year that is expended unless there are known extenuating circumstances -- such as a leader's retirement plan. Minus extenuating reasons, a board's failure to extend a contract can be a sign of dissatisfaction with a superintendent but is short of buying out a contract or replacing the superintendent.
Rodgers' contract does not include any terms about leaving the job before the expiration of the contract. There is no buyout clause in the agreement. The contract says only that "the board may terminate the contract at any time for cause."
The School Board interviewed six people for the superintendent's position in recent weeks but decided May 7 that it would select an interim superintendent for the coming year.
Metro on 05/18/2018