Superintendent Rick Doll speaks to those in attendance after he was announced as the winner of the MLK Champion of Equity award during the One Dream Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Celebration hosted by the Lawrence Public Schools, Jan. 21, 2016, at South Middle School.

When the Lawrence school district hires its new superintendent, it will be able to offer that person at least $32,000 more per year than the outgoing superintendent without actually spending more.

The new superintendent’s salary will be between $205,000 and $215,000 per year, the high end of which would amount to a 24 percent increase over the current superintendent’s salary. Though that may sound like a big jump, because of a state charge associated with current Superintendent Rick Doll’s employment, the district will still end up spending a comparable amount.

The district pays a penalty of about $40,000 to employ Doll because he is receiving retirement benefits from the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System and, as a district employee, is also continuing to work for the state. The district pays the “working after retirement” surcharge of about 24 percent of Doll’s approximately $173,000 salary to KPERS on a yearly basis.

“We’re paying (a penalty to KPERS) on his behalf because he is a retired superintendent, so he continues to receive his retirement benefits in full through that retirement program,” explained school board President Vanessa Sanburn.

Sanburn said that because of the penalty, what looks on paper like a big increase in salary for the new superintendent isn’t actually an increase in expense for the district.

“If you add that in, the range we’re looking at is quite comparable to what we’re currently paying,” she said.

District officials said they have been paying the surcharge for Doll, as well as all other working retirees, since a surcharge for working retirees began about eight years ago.

“We have been paying the surcharge on all retirees who work for us since the law went into effect in 2008,” said David Cunningham, director of human resources and legal services for the district, via email.

Doll, 61, announced in November that he had accepted a full-time position as associate professor and executive director of the Kansas Educational Leadership Institute at Kansas State University.

If Doll had continued to be employed by the district, upcoming KPERS rule changes governing working after retirement would have necessitated changes to his employment contract. Doll’s resignation will be effective on June 30, the last day before the new rules take effect. Doll said via email that the upcoming rule change was a factor in his decision to resign.

Under the new rules, once a working retiree reaches the earnings limit of $25,000 in a year, that person is required to choose between receiving benefits from the KPERS retirement plan or continuing to work, according to the KPERS website.

Increase in district expense or not, the new salary is meant to be competitive. The new superintendent’s salary would have that person making more than the city manager hired this month for $190,000. Sanburn said the proposed salary was recommended by consultants — the district hired the firm McPherson and Jacobson to aid in the superintendent search — and based on factors such as district enrollment and cost of living.

The Lawrence district includes 20 schools, a college and career center and about 10,500 students. The district’s virtual school has about 1,200 students enrolled. Sanburn said the proposed salary is comparable to districts similar in size to Lawrence. For example, the Topeka district has about 12,800 students and its new superintendent was hired last week for $215,000 per year.

“The firm that we hired did an analysis that took into account district size, region and basically what the market would say that we would need to pay in order to recruit and retain a superintendent of the caliber that we’re wanting,” Sanburn said.