The Pleasant Valley Area School District will once again be offering the Singer Family C&E Foundation Scholarship.

The scholarship, which had been awarded for about 20 years, provided $7,500 in financial assistance per year for four years to three Pleasant Valley High School seniors. That was a total of $30,000 per student for a total of $90,000.

Superintendent James Konrad announced at the school board meeting on Thursday that the scholarship will once again be offered to graduating seniors to help them cover the costs postsecondary education tuition.

“I’m absolutely elated to share with you that this afternoon at about 2 o’clock, we found out that Pleasant Valley has been invited to participate in the Singer Family C&E Scholarship for the 2024-25 school year,” Konrad said.

He added that he has heartfelt gratitude toward Brian Morgan, a guidance counselor with the high school who has been receiving lead counselor training from the foundation for the past year.

“He did an incredible job last year of getting this opportunity back on track for our students,” Konrad said. “Unfortunately, we had some changes, and it prevented us from being the recipient of offering these scholarships to students, but that in addition to the $7.2 million in scholarships last year, the hope is that kids have some wonderful opportunities for the Class of 2025, so we’re just elated about the opportunity and know we’ll continue to work with the Singer scholarship.”

The Singer Family C&E Foundation has specific guidelines for school districts to follow when selecting candidates for the scholarship.

According to an application for the scholarship, the foundation seeks to award character-based scholarships to students who show the qualities of compassion, perseverance in working to the best of ability, cooperative community spirit and integrity. The foundation does not take into consideration class rank, achievements, test scores or financial need.

The scholarship was discontinued in the spring of 2023 when the school district moved Sherri Fallon, the lead counselor of the scholarship and a PVHS guidance counselor, to the middle school in December 2022. Alison Gimbi, a guidance counselor at the middle school, was moved to the high school. Without a trained lead counselor for the scholarship, the foundation discontinued the scholarship for Pleasant Valley, so it was not available to the Class of 2023 seniors.

The school district selected PVHS guidance counselor Sarah Talianck to begin the training as the lead counselor, but she resigned in June 2023.

Morgan, who had been a guidance counselor at PVHS and assisted Fallon with the Singer scholarship, was then asked to begin the training as lead counselor. He had moved to the district’s Bears Academy as the cyber school counselor for fifth to 12th grade, but agreed to also become the school counseling department chair for grades nine to 12.

Morgan began the lead counselor training during the 2023-24 school year, but since the scholarship was not reinstated yet, no seniors from the Class of 2024 were able to apply for it.