Weast tells BoE he wants $1.436 million contract

The superintendent has made it official: He wants his four-year, $1.436 million contract renewed. Apparently he isn't seeking a raise after all.

The Gazette reports that Superintendent Weast has formally written the Board of Education asking for a four-year renewal of his existing $359,000-a-year salary and tax-sheltered perks.

"While I won’t stay forever, I would like to stay another contract term because I think there’s more work to be done," the 59 year-old Weast tells the Gazette. "I’m at a pivotal point in my life [where] I really want to make a difference, and I believe that we can do it here."

That four more years will put an extra $400,000 cash in his tax-sheltered retirement fund. Weast also gets a free automobile with the deal.

School Board President Nancy Navarro, who has sparred with Weast in the past and who won re-election from voters who don't want Weast contract renewed, says the contract must be "treated as a personnel matter."

The board intends to vote on whether or not to extend Weast's contract on February 13.

Weast sees blue skies ahead for himself. ‘‘I haven’t got any communications from my employer that they want me to go. I haven’t [gotten] any signals that . . .weren’t anything but positive,” Weast tells the Gazette. ‘‘I didn’t see that as a negative. I saw that as a positive, and I was told that it was coming, and I encouraged it.”