The Baltimore County and Baltimore City school districts approved contracts for their superintendents on Tuesday.

The county school board voted 10-2 Tuesday night to give Superintendent Dallas Dance a four-year contract with an annual salary of $287,000.

Dance, who is now earning $275,000 a year, will not get any increase in pay over the four years of the next contract.

Board members said Dance has pledged to stay in the district for another four years. On top of the pay increase, Dance will get $142,000 in deferred annual compensation. The details of the contract were not made available directly after the vote.

School board member Mike Collins called the new deal “a fair and equitable contract.” He said the 4 percent increases that he believed teachers would get annually are reflected in a 4 percent annual increase that is being given to Dance up front.

But two other board members voted against the contract. Kathleen Causey said the contract was a greater percentage than other school system employees are getting in one year.

It took the board months to come to an agreement, and members appeared to be continuing those negotiations until minutes before the meeting began, nearly an hour late.

School board member Ann Miller said she voted against the contract because she believed the superintendent was getting one of the highest salaries of any superintendent in the state while an ethics complaint says he's been moonlighting and traveling around the country.

Dance said earlier this week that he could not comment on the ethics complaint because he has not seen it, but that he would comply with any requests the ethics panel makes of him.

Meanwhile, the Baltimore school board unanimously approved a four-year-contract Tuesday for the new superintendent, Sonja Santelises, formally ushering in what many hope will be a new academic era for the district's students and marking the end of the truncated and troubled tenure of her predecessor.

Santelises' appointment as the city schools CEO formally begins July 1. Her four-year contract will pay her $298,000 per-year and mirrors that of former schools CEO Gregory Thornton, who left the district Friday just two years into his four-year contract and with a year's pay of his $290,000 annual salary.

The contract maintains a limitation on the amount of unused vacation and personal days that Santelises can cash out, which the board imposed in Thornton's contract after The Baltimore Sun revealed that former city schools CEO Andres Alonso left with more than $100,000 in leave pay.

Santelises' contract also outlines unspecified performance bonuses and incentives at the discretion of the board, an 11 percent annual contribution into a retirement account and a $700 monthly automobile allowance.

Notably different, however, is a stipulation making Santelises' annual performance evaluations confidential unless she and the board mutually agree otherwise. Thornton's evaluations were public under his contract. As a result, The Baltimore Sun published his evaluation, which included pages of criticisms and shortcomings from his first year, in March.

Amid a flurry of other leadership shuffles that were formalized during the board meeting, members were also voted to appoint Santelises' second-in-command, Alison Perkins-Cohen.

Perkins-Cohen who has served as executive director of new initiatives since 2011, will be Santelises' chief of staff, also beginning July 1.

erica.green@baltsun.com