The salary is not the cost
Noblesville's superintendent is paid a salary of $199,851. That is the number that gets quoted. His contract guarantees at least $284,319 a year — about 42% more — before a single discretionary dollar or a dollar of health insurance is counted. The contract is public. Here is every line of it, and here is what we still can't prove.
Why this is on a referendum site
This is not an argument that the superintendent is overpaid, and it is not a claim that anything was hidden. The contract is posted on the district's own website, exactly as Indiana law requires, and the compensation structure in it is ordinary for the job.
It is on this site for one reason: the referendum is a request to fund compensation, and compensation is not salary. Roughly 80% of a school district's operating budget is people. When the debate is conducted in salary figures — his, the administrators', the teachers' — it is being conducted in a number that understates what the district actually spends by something on the order of 40%. A voter deciding whether to approve eight years at up to 57¢ should be looking at the real figure.
The superintendent's contract is the worked example because it is the one contract published in full, line by line, for a single named individual. Everything below is traceable to a numbered section of it.
What the contract guarantees
Section 6 of the contract — the figure that appears in news coverage and board minutes
salary plus everything the contract obliges the district to pay — no estimates, no discretionary items
adds incentive pay, vacation buyback and retirement on the deferrals — and still excludes health insurance
Bars share one scale. Health, dental, vision, term life and disability premiums are paid by the district and are in none of these three bars, because the district does not publish the dollar amounts.
| Component | Amount | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Base salary | $199,851 | Contract §6 |
| Extra-duties stipend, $1,000/month | $12,000 | Contract §9 |
| Technology stipend | $1,200 | Contract §17 |
| Cash wages | $213,051 | the three rows above |
| Employer contribution to a 403(b), at the IRS annual maximum | $24,500 | Contract §18 · IRS Notice 2025-67 see caveat 1 |
| Employer contribution to a 457(b), at the IRS annual maximum | $24,500 | Contract §18 · same notice see caveat 1 |
| Teachers' Retirement Fund at 10.1% — the 7.1% employer rate plus the 3% employee share, which the district pays on the employee's behalf | $21,518 | Administrator Addendum · INPRS 2026 rates |
| Professional membership dues | $750 | Administrator Addendum |
| Contract-guaranteed total | $284,319 | 42% above salary — $1.42 leaves the budget for every $1.00 of salary |
Primary source: the superintendent's 2024–2027 contract, published by Noblesville Schools on its Negotiated Agreements page. The same PDF carries the Administrator Contract Addendum, which supplies the retirement and benefit terms the contract refers to. Independently confirmed by the district's own public-meeting notice of 29 October 2024, which Indiana law requires a board to publish before approving a superintendent contract. The 3% member contribution is the statutory rate described in INPRS's own employer guidance, which notes employers may elect to pay it; the Addendum says Noblesville does. Every figure in the table is reproduced by a 60-line script in the site's evidence archive — backups/superintendent-contract/verify-total-comp.js, no dependencies, node verify-total-comp.js.
What that $284,319 leaves out
Four things are real, are in the contract, and are not in the figure above — because each is either conditional or has no published dollar value. We would rather quote a number we can defend than a bigger one we can't.
| Item | Worth | Why it's excluded |
|---|---|---|
| Incentive pay — the board sets aside up to 12% of base salary to award against goals (§15) | up to $23,982 | Discretionary. We have not found a record of what was actually awarded. |
| Vacation buyback — up to 10 unused days, which he may direct into a 401(a) (§16) | up to $7,687 | Only paid if district obligations prevented him taking the days. |
| Retirement owed on the deferrals, if §18's own wording governs | $4,949 | See caveat 2 below. |
| Health, dental and vision — the district pays 81.4% of the HSA Core premium | not published | The percentage is public; the premium dollars are not. A family plan at that share is plainly five figures, but we will not print a number we had to guess. |
| Term life at two times salary, and long-term disability at no cost to him | not published | Premiums paid by the district; amounts not disclosed. |
Insurance share: the Administrator Addendum adopts the fringe benefits of the negotiated teachers' agreement except where it states otherwise, and Article IV of that agreement sets the Board's contribution at 81.4% of the HSA Core plan premium for the coverage category chosen. Indiana Gateway's employee-compensation report, which would show what was actually paid, is currently returning a server error and could not be used as a cross-check.
Where this could be wrong
Three of the four claims we checked from one recent tip collapsed on inspection. So here is the list of things on this page that could move, stated before anyone has to find them.
1. The $49,000 of deferrals is the number to challenge. Section 18 opens by saying that “in addition to the other compensation and benefits,” the Board “shall provide additional dollars” for 403(b) and 457(b) contributions “equal to the IRS maximum limit” for each. The district's own public notice lists it as “additional compensation.” But the same section then calls these “salary reduction contributions,” which ordinarily means money coming out of his salary rather than on top of it. We read it as employer money, because that is what both the opening sentence and the public notice say. If that reading is wrong, this page is overstated by $49,000 and the guaranteed total is about $235,000 — still 18% above salary. This is the one item worth a public-records request.
2. The retirement base may be larger than we used. We applied the 10.1% only to cash wages. Section 18 says the deferrals are “compensation for purposes of contributions to the Indiana State Teachers' Retirement Fund,” and §§9 and 17 say the stipends count as “wages for ISTRF credit.” If that language governs, the district owes another $4,949. We left it out. This error runs in the district's favour.
3. The salary may already be higher. Section 6 permitted an increase effective 1 July 2026, at the highest percentage given to any other administrator. We have not found a published figure for the current year, so we use the contract's $199,851. If he received a raise, every figure here is low.
4. The IRS limits are 2026 figures applied to a 2024 contract. The contract says “the IRS maximum limit … for that calendar year,” so the limit moves each year; the 2024 notice quoted $23,000 for each plan. We use the 2026 limits because 2026 is the year being voted on.
5. We could not complete the independent cross-check. Indiana's Gateway portal publishes a Form 100R showing compensation actually paid. Its report viewer is returning a configuration error, so every figure here rests on the contract rather than on payroll records. The contract is the stronger source for employer benefit costs, which a 100R does not show — but it is what the district agreed to pay, not proof of what it paid.
What we are not claiming
| A claim you may hear | Why we don't make it |
|---|---|
| “The district hides the superintendent's compensation.” | It doesn't. The full contract and the addendum are posted on the district's website, and the board published a statutory notice before approving it. We found everything on this page in about twenty minutes without filing anything. |
| “He gets a 401(a) worth 10% of salary, like other Indiana administrators.” | Not here. In this contract a 401(a) appears only as an optional destination for vacation-buyback dollars. Noblesville uses a different mechanism — maxed 403(b) and 457(b) — and repeating another district's structure as though it were Noblesville's would be wrong. |
| “He'll get district-paid health insurance for life after he retires.” | He won't. The Addendum limits retiree health coverage to administrators in an administrative position before 1 January 2010. He started in 2022, so it does not apply to him. It is a real benefit at this district, and it is not his. |
| “The car and technology allowances are the scandal.” | They're $13,200 of a figure well over a quarter of a million dollars — about 4%. They belong in the table for completeness, not in a headline. |
The part that isn't about one person
One line in the Administrator Addendum applies far beyond the superintendent's office:
“Noblesville Schools shall contribute the employee share of the eligible employee's salary to the retirement fund, in addition to the mandatory employer contribution as determined by INPRS.”
Indiana requires 3% of covered wages to go into each member's retirement account. The law lets that come from the employee or from the employer. Noblesville pays it. Added to the 7.1% employer rate INPRS set for 2026, the district's retirement cost is 10.1% of covered payroll, not 7.1% — and the employee's own 3% never leaves their paycheque.
That is a defensible thing for a district to do, and it is not unique to Noblesville. But it is the reason the arithmetic on this page is not a quirk of one contract. Every salary figure in this referendum debate is missing a benefit load of the same general size. A 1% raise does not cost 1%. An eight-year funding commitment is not a commitment to eight years of the salaries being quoted.
We have documented that load precisely for exactly one employee, because exactly one employee's terms are published in full. If you want it for the rest, the route is a public-records request for the benefit and salary schedules — and if we get them, they will go here.
Sources and the full calculator: stopthenoblesvillereferendum.com · Vote NO on the Noblesville Schools operating referendum — Tuesday, November 3, 2026.