LAKELAND — Incoming Polk County Public Schools Superintendent Frederick Heid was on the job Wednesday afternoon as he transitions into the position after the School Board voted 5-1 Tuesday night to approve his contract. School Board member Lynn Wilson did not attend the meeting because he is self-quarantining with COVID-19 symptoms. Kay Fields was the lone dissenting vote. Her opposition, she said, was not against Heid — she successfully lobbied her colleagues to vote unanimously for him — but that his $255,000 salary is $17,000 more than outgoing Superintendent Jacqueline Byrd’s $238,000 salary. “I believe wholeheartedly in gender equity,” Fields said. “It sends a very poor message in my part of the world to have an incoming male making more than a departing female.”