Decatur’s school board has sewed up Superintendent David Dude for an additional three years, awarding him a new contract that takes effect July 1, 2021 through June 30, 2024.
Dude’s currently in the final year of a three-year deal paying him $219,000 for the 2020-21 school year, not counting a $20,000 bonus usually approved in May.
The new arrangement, his third consecutive three-year contract with City Schools of Decatur, rolls that bonus into the base salary. The contract breaks down this way:
$255,704 for the 2021-2022 school year, $262,280 for the 2022-2023 school year and $267,435 for the 2023-2024 school year.
Awarding a bonus has been essentially pro forma for years predating Dude. Board Chair Lewis Jones said that Dude had become uncomfortable with the practice, adding that, “We as a board always thought of it as part of his salary. We will still evaluate him annually, there will still be an assessment of goals, there just won’t be a financial award tied into it.”
Dude received his most recent $20,000 bonus in May and donated the entire amount to the school nutrition and custodial staff who have prepared and served food to students since mid-March, when City Schools of Decatur closed all buildings for COVID-19.
Dude, who took over at CSD in Nov. 2015, is the district’s 10th superintendent since 1902. Before his arrival the average Decatur superintendent tenure was 12½ years.
“We never intended to use the bonus as a motivator,” Jones said. “David himself is not motivated by the bonus, he’s motivated by doing a good job, which he has certainly done. There just didn’t seem to be a need for it anymore.”
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