Selma City School System Superintendent Gerald Shirley was approved for a three-year contract during a June school board meeting — or so he thought.

At Thursday’s school board meeting, the Selma City School System attorney, Katy Campbell, brought Shirley’s incomplete contract to the board’s attention.

“So how long have you been working as superintendent?” school board president Henry Hicks asked Shirley, who was appointed in October. “So you have been working as superintendent since October without a contract?”

Campbell wanted to notify the board that though several changes and amendments to Shirley’s contract have been made, the board has yet to sign off on his overall contract.

“As far as having these various terms in writing and approving the contract — you all never did that,” Campbell said to the board. “We contacted all of the board members a month ago now and asked them for your comments and for their review and I didn’t hear back from anyone who thought it needed to be changed.”

The board has thus far approved several segments, Campbell said, but has not completed the whole contract.

A special committee composed of two board members is part of the committee that designs and works with the superintendent’s contract. These members are Frank Chestnut Jr. and Holland Powell, who will now be replaced by Dr. Udo Ufomadu.

“Mr. Shirley is still working off of his interim contract which says that he will still get paid as long as he is still working as superintendent until a new contract is signed,” Chestnut said. “So we have some loose ends to tie up.”

The board, which was unable to decipher in the meeting if it had actually approved a contract or not, decided to come back and sign the contract at a later meeting once they went back and reviewed minutes from previous meetings.