The Pleasant Valley School Board approved a 3.5% raise for Superintendent James Konrad at their meeting Thursday night, but it wasn’t unanimous.

The approval came through a 7-2 vote with directors John Gesiskie and Ryan O’Keefe voting no.

“I have a different way of looking at evaluations. I don’t look at this as personal against Dr. Konrad. I look at this as the district as a whole,” Gesiskie said. He thinks the district has room to improve.

As per state law, the school board has to conduct a performance review of the superintendent each year.

According to the meeting’s agenda, the directors agreed to the standards for the evaluation on Dec. 5, and conducted it from May 24 to July 17.

The result was that “Dr. Konrad achieved a performance level that met or exceeded our expectations,” the agenda stated.

Gesiskie said the evaluation asked if students’ performance and achievement improved.

“Unfortunately, our current data indicates significant challenges,” he said.

Gesiskie said that according to Great Pennsylvania Schools, two of 17 academic areas assessed by the PSSA and Keystone tests showed that most PVSD students did not score in the proficient level or above.

According to the website, the two areas with high proficiency were fourth grade science at 85.10% on the PSSA test, and 11th grade biology with 75.09% of the students scoring high on the Keystone exams.

The lowest proficiency levels were eighth grade math with 21.3% proficient or advanced on the PSSA and 11th grade literature with a 29.77% proficiency on the Keystone exams. All other scores were in the 30%, 40% and 50% range.

The Great Pennsylvania Schools website is run by the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, and results are based on publicly available data from the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

Gesiskie said, “Furthermore, approximately 93% of our goals in our comprehensive plan were not met.”

His second reason for voting no on the raise involved providing a safe and positive school environment for all students and personnel.

Gesiskie praised Chief Robert Miller Jr., who retired at the end of last school year, for doing a great job. He said his concern involved grievances, such as “staff cases progressing to arbitration, involuntary non-hiring of staff for supplementary contracts, unprofessional handling of staff disagreements, is all negatively affecting our school environment.”

And the third reason is a lack of effective and open communication. Gesiskie said the website isn’t being updated consistently, community events such as Night of Unity haven’t been brought back, awards events are focusing only on the seniors, and “committee questions are not always answered with clarity or complete accuracy.”

Director Melanie Zipp saw it differently.

Zipp said the evaluations looked at five areas in which to assess with a score such as needs improvement, proficient, distinguished and the like. All of the scores from the nine directors were pooled together to come up with an overall assessment.

“Overall that cumulative score on two of those elements was distinguished. Three of them were proficient, so for my perspective that puts the performance above an averages based on what we asked,” she said.

Zipp said she provided feedback last year of areas she felt needed improvement, and Konrad was receptive to her suggestions.

“I think Dr. Konrad is open to feedback, so I supported that increase,” she said. “For me, it’s very simple math. There’s five of them. Two of them were above average. Three of them were average. That overall is above average that’s why I supported the increase.”

The increase brings Konrad’s salary to $196,021, and is retroactive to July 1.

“I appreciate the support that this board has expressed in the direction that we are going. As is always, we have areas to improve,” Konrad said. “We have a great board that provides feedback on ways to continuously improve. I’m fortunate to work with some really incredible individuals not just on the board, but also staffing. And it’s nice to see the directions that we’re headed and the future, so just look forward to continuing to see great things here in Pleasant Valley.”

Konrad, who joined Pleasant Valley School District in December 2021, had sought a $25,000 increase in November. It would have brought his salary to $215,000, but the board decided not to pursue it following community backlash.