Pleasant Valley School District’s business manager turned down the chief financial officer position at the Bethlehem Area School District on Friday after getting a raise Thursday night.

The school board approved giving Michael Simonetta a raise of about $20,000. It was not originally part of the agenda, but was added at the beginning of the meeting.

Simonetta was up for a new job as chief financial officer for Bethlehem at a salary of $177,000. The administration’s nomination to hire him was on their school board agenda for Monday night.

Simonetta said in an email ton Friday that he has withdrawn his name for consideration of the position in Bethlehem.

Before coming to Pleasant Valley, he was the chief operating officer for the Easton Area School District. He came to PVSD in May 2021 with a salary of $145,000. The new raise puts him at $165,000, which is $5,000 less than the school district’s Superintendent James Konrad.

Mark Fitzgerald, the solicitor for the school district, said the reason for the raise is because Simonetta will be handling additional responsibilities.

School board President Susan Kresge said, “Mike has done a tremendous job for us in my opinion. We have some other things we need to do. As you all know, our buildings need some repairs, and we’ve talked about going into building projects, and we need Mike’s expertise on that. There’s also a couple other items that Mike can help us with, so it was the board’s desire to do this.”

Simonetta has been handling the human resources responsibilities since the beginning of the year after HR director Jessica Tomon resigned. The school district announced her replacement, Lori Fulmer, at the June 9 school board meeting. Fulmer will begin her new job as HR supervisor on July 5.

The business director wasn’t the only Pleasant Valley employee on the agenda of another school district.

Pleasant Valley High School’s principal Kelli George was on the agenda in the Palmerton Area School District to be the next principal of Towamensing Township. Her appointment was approved.

According to George’s biography on the PVHS website, she is a 1988 graduate of Pleasant Valley High School, and has been in education for 29 years. She started off as a paraprofessional in 1993 in the Stroudsburg School District.

George then moved on to teaching in 1995 at Pleasant Valley Intermediate School, where she became dean of students in 2012. She became the assistant principal at PVHS in 2018, and the principal is 2021.

Superintendent Konrad said in an interview that George wanted to go to Palmerton because she lives in that school district and didn’t want to miss the chance to be the principal at an elementary school there, since those positions do not become available often.

“I really like the work she did,” Konrad said.

George is taking a pay cut to go to Palmerton. Her new salary will be $90,000. It was $118,000 at PVHS.

Her pension will not be affected by the move, because public school districts contribute to the pensions managed by the Public School Employees’ Retirement System. No matter how many public school districts an employee works for, there is one pension.

As for George’s replacement, Konrad said he would definitely consider someone currently on staff in the Pleasant Valley School District.

“We always want to value the talent we have internally,” he said. “Someone might be waiting for this opportunity.”