The Wake County Board of Education voted Tuesday to give Burns a 4 percent raise that will increase his salary by $10,500 to $273,000 a year. He'll also receive $39,790 in other benefits, such as travel expenses and insurance coverage.

The school board also extended his contract by a year, through June 30, 2012.

Board members cited Burns' work pushing through an outside audit of the curriculum that is expected to lead to major changes.

"The board feels he has put processes in place that will move the district forward," said Rosa Gill, chairwoman of the school board.

Burns, 55, has spent most of the past 32 years working in the district. He became superintendent in July 2006.

"I appreciate the opportunity to continue serving," Burns said. "As for how long I'll stay, I see a lot of work to do, and I'm very excited about the work that will be done with the curriculum management audit."

Wake has dealt with rapid student growth while facing such challenges as a lawsuit over whether the school district needs parental consent to send students to year-round schools.

Wake was the 19th-largest school system in the nation last year and is likely to move up again this school year. The system had an enrollment of 136,060 students on Friday.

Burns' salary is competitive with those of superintendents in similar-size school systems.

Peter Gorman, superintendent of Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools, has a salary of $260,000 and extras such as $35,000 for retirement and a performance bonus of as much as $26,000. Wake enrollment surpassed Charlotte's during the last school year.

Burns has a higher salary than the superintendents of the two districts that Wake will likely overtake in enrollment this school year.

Terry Grier, superintendent of the San Diego Unified School District in California, has a salary of $269,000. Jerry Weast, superintendent of Montgomery County Schools in Maryland, gets $243,799.

Under Burns' contract, he automatically gets an annual raise of 3 percent. The board increased it by another percentage point.

The raise comes during a year in which the school board raised student parking fees and complained it had been underfunded by county commissioners by $36.2 million. Gill said the budget situation may have been why they didn't give Burns a bigger raise.

The vote was 7-1 with Ron Margiotta the lone dissenter.

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