photo by: Josie Heimsoth/Journal-World

Superintendent Jeanice Swift is pictured on Monday, February 24, 2025.

The Lawrence school board on Monday approved Superintendent Jeanice Swift’s employment contract with an annual salary of $235,000.

Swift was the interim superintendent prior to being offered the permanent role, and her contract will run from July 1 of this year through June 30, 2028. Her interim contract will be in place until July.

According to the contract, Swift will be paid an annual salary of $235,000, a salary on par with her predecessor Anthony Lewis in his last year in Lawrence. When Swift was hired in August as the interim superintendent, it was at a salary of $194,482 from Aug. 30, 2024, to June 30, 2025.

On July 1, 2026, and each July 1 thereafter, Swift shall receive a 2% increase in her base salary, the contract states, “unless there are major reductions in local, state or federal revenues or an unforeseen financial crisis which adversely affects the funding of schools.”

As the Journal-World reported, as of July 2023, Lewis’s annual base salary after a 3-year contract extension was $229,295, with benefits increasing that figure to $234,635.