The Pleasant Valley School Board plans to vote on a new five-year contract for the superintendent at its meeting on March 26.

School board President Sue Kresge announced it at the end of the school board’s workshop meeting on Thursday night.

“The Pleasant Valley School District Board of Education is pleased to announce that we have reached an agreement on a new five-year contract with Dr. Konrad,” she said. “This agreement reflects the board’s confidence in Dr. Konrad’s leadership and our shared commitment to continued stability, academic growth and the long-term success of our students, staff and community.”

Kresge said the contract will be effective as of July 1, which is the beginning of the school district’s fiscal year.

“It’s aligning every contract to begin July 1,” she explained.

James Konrad, Ed.D., joined the school district in December 2021 with a five-year contract and a starting salary of $170,000. Since then, his salary has increased.

The school board approved in a 7-2 vote on Aug. 14, 2025, to give Konrad a 3.5% raise, which brought his salary to $196,021 and was retroactive to July 1, 2025. Directors John Gesiskie and Ryan O’Keefe voted no.

At that time, Gesiskie said he was voting no, because he felt the district had room for improvement.

“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.

Evaluation tests such as the Keystone exams for 11th-grade students, and the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment exams for grades 3-8 in English language arts and mathematics and grades 5-8 for science have shown some results below state proficiency levels.

On Thursday night, Kresge said the details of the new contract with Konrad will not be released until March 23. That is when the agenda for the March 26 board meeting is released, as per requirements under the Sunshine Act.

Konrad had met with members of the Citizens Advisory Committee on Wednesday night and gave a presentation titled, “Building Our District’s Future: A Roadmap Rooted in Transparency, Collaboration and Growth.” In it, he recapped where the school district was in 2020-21, and gave updates on how it has progressed under his leadership.

On Thursday night, Konrad said he wasn’t going to go over the presentation again, since many of the school board members had been at that meeting and for the sake of time. The workshop meeting had already gone on for three hours.

“It was just a really nice opportunity to talk about, you know, kind of the trials and tribulations and the challenges we had in the beginning, … some of the progress that we have made, some of the updates, and again there’s still more to come,” Konrad said.

“But it’s really nice to talk about what the future outlook is, what are the pressure points, how are we going to navigate the next years down the line.”

Gesiskie, who is chair of that committee, said, “It was great. … More of the community needs to see this to understand what has happened along the way and how it has progressed.

Gesiskie encouraged the community to read Konrad’s presentation on the school district’s website. It can be found by going to the Administration tab; click on Board Docs and Policies; meetings; March 12, 2026 Working Session Meeting; Print the Agenda; Detailed Agenda; item 8G; and click on the file attachment.

“You really need to read this and see what’s going on, and make your own conclusions,” Gesiskie said. “But the idea is we are going forward. Is it as fast as we want? Well, nothing is as fast. If you go too fast, you’re always going to trip over something.”