PORTSMOUTH — Schools Supt. Susan F. Lusi yesterday rebutted School Committee candidates in next Tuesday’s Democratic primary who have asserted that some teachers received no raise this year while the School Committee gave the superintendent 20 percent in her new three-year contract.

The debate over the schools takes on particular importance in the days leading up to the primary, because Tuesday’s balloting will decide the election for three open seats on the seven-member School Committee.

The Democratic nominees will face no opposition in the November general election.

As a new superintendent, Lusi said, her base pay has risen about half as fast, percentage wise, as the base pay of an inexperienced teacher hired in 2005, the same year as she.

“Let me be clear,” she said. “I in no way begrudge our teachers their compensation or their increases.”

“They are well deserved, and we are in different jobs with different pay scales which are not entirely comparable,” Lusi said in a statement.

For one thing, she said, raises for first-year teachers given in the latest rollover acknowledge that they were underpaid in the past.

But Lusi said that as long as comparisons between her pay and teachers’ salaries are being made publicly, “I want them to be factual.”

In her statement, Lusi did not refer to candidates by name but said that she had been disappointed in the political discourse over the past few weeks because of inaccurate information put out publicly regarding her salary increase relative to teacher raises.

Marilyn King and Angela Volpicelli, two endorsed Democratic candidates, have stated that some teachers received no raise.

But information released by the School Committee last spring about a one-year rollover of the teachers’ contract for the current school year shows that all teachers received some kind of raise.

The lowest dollar amount was $1,910, which represents a 4.5 percent raise for teachers who have completed their third year in the classroom.

This year, for the first time, teachers with less than 10 years’ experience did give up a cost-of-living increase that they had been accustomed to receiving in addition to raises based on their years in the classroom.

In the one-year rollover, those with 10 or more years’ experience received a flat 3.1 percent raise, or an additional $2,137 on their base pay of $68,940, bringing it to $71,077.

Lusi, meanwhile, compared the rate of salary increases between herself and a new teacher hired in 2005, the same year she became superintendent.

In the last four years, the teacher has received increases totaling 28.71 percent, from an initial $34,110 to $43,902 today, the superintendent said.

If the teacher has a doctorate degree, as Lusi does, he or she is entitled to an additional $4,150, for a total of $48,052, the superintendent said. She said that figure represents a cumulative raise of 40.87 percent since 2005.

Lusi, hired at $110,000, received cost-of-living increases that raised her pay a total of 6 percent over three years, to $116,583 in the school year that ended last June.

Lusi, one of the lower paid superintendents in the state when she was hired, points out that she was the only educator in the district who did not receive an additional stipend for her advanced degrees.

Her new contract raises her base salary to $125,450, representing a 14.05 percent pay hike over her starting pay in 2005, Lusi said.

In addition, she is receiving a stipend of $4,550 for her doctorate for the first time this year, pushing her overall compensation to $130,000. Lusi said that total amounts to a cumulative 18.18 percent increase over the last four years, Lusi said.

She said that sum still leaves her in the lower half of the salary range for Rhode Island school superintendents, although she is much closer to the middle of the pack.

Lusi said that “Reasonable people may well disagree after understanding the facts, but I hope that you will hold everyone engaged in the dialogue of how our schools should be run accountable for presenting you with information that is accurate.”

King and Volpicelli are at odds with incumbent Sylvia Wedge, the committee chairwoman and the other endorsed Democrat in the race, as well as incumbent Terri Cortvriend.

Wedge and Cortvriend approved both Lusi’s new contract and the one-year rollover for teachers.

Cortvriend, who has Wedge’s personal backing, is running unendorsed in an unusual and awkward situation for the Democratic Town Committee.

For personal reasons, Cortvriend has said, she could not give a commitment to the Democratic Town Committee when she was approached earlier this year. But Wedge and another Democratic incumbent, Marjorie Levesque, both urged Cortvriend to reconsider.

gmacris@projo.com