A contract with a base salary of $118,500, but a good many addenda have Selma School Superintendent Don Jefferson pushing closer to $150,000.

Plus, if the draft contract discussed Tuesday during a Selma School Board work session holds until Dec. 9, Jefferson will have a parachute to land softly if he should not complete his three-year tenure.

The draft contract allows for $800 travel allowance inside the school district each month; a yet-to-be-determined standard disability policy paid by the school district, a $250,000 term life insurance policy paid by the school board, payment by the school system into the state retirement system and 5 percent of his annual salary into a retirement fund.

The contract doesn’t say where the insurance policies would be purchased, school attorney Katie Campbell said, adding the policies were group policies furnished to other school employees.

School board member Holland Powell told Jefferson if the school board pays for his insurance premiums, the superintendent has incurred a tax liability because the premium payments would be considered income.

“He would be better off, from his standpoint to give him a raise to cover the tax increase,” Powell added.

Campbell said the school system payment into a retirement fund of Jefferson’s choosing also would be taxable.

“But that’s what he’s asking for,” she said.

The insurance clauses were not in the contract of Jefferson’s predecessor; neither were the private retirement fund payments of 5 percent of the annual salary or a little more than $5,925.

“You just give him a raise is what you do,” Powell told the rest of the board. “How much do you want to pay this man?”

Jefferson countered by saying at the superintendent’s state conference he discovered the average payment for a superintendent is $140,000.

“And the salary that I receive from Selma City Schools is not that. This is one way of having my needs met. That’s all it is,” Jefferson said.

The School Superintendents of Alabama’s website does not list an average pay for school superintendents in the state. However, the website www.ihireschooladministrators.com shows the average pay of a school superintendent in Alabama with less experience base pay at $70,000; average experience base pay at $90,000 and more experienced base pay at $104,000. The average salary data used by the website is based on a database of 1,838 superintendent candidates who have registered on the site within the past 12 months.

School board Vice President Frank Chestnut Jr. said the salary and benefits negotiation proved instructive. Nobody thought about the benefits.

“Now we are sitting here discussing other parts that’s going to take us way beyond where we want to be,” he said. “That’s just food for thought for board members. Just something to think about.”

When Powell asked Jefferson what would happen if the school board didn’t approve the contract, Jefferson replied, “We’ll see what happens if we get there.”

Other perks in the contract included 20 days vacation; payment for civic club dues and other association dues, plus journals and other literature; a clause that enables Jefferson to receive six months written notice in advance of expiration of his contract by the board to terminate and a clause that says the superintendent only has to give a three-month notice or immediately notify the board president that he’s searching for a job.

“It’s not balanced,” Campbell said of the notification section of the draft contract. “He does not have to give you as much notice as you have to give to him.”

The rationale behind the section is it would be harder for Jefferson to find a job than for the school board to find an interim superintendent.

Powell said he disagreed with the clauses.

“I don’t want to deal with another lame duck here,” he said. “If you tell me you want to quit; quit.”