Lehighton Area School District will be keeping its current solicitor for at least another four months.

The board, by a 5-3 vote Monday, approved an extension with Filer & Schwab, Attorneys at Law.

“It is my understanding you wish to do a request for proposals for solicitor services,” attorney Eric Filer wrote in a letter to the district.

“As our current agreement expires this month, we would be willing to extend it up to four months. You could terminate this extension at any time.”

Voting for the extension were Steve Holland, Wayne Wentz, Larry Stern, Rita Spinelli and Nathan Foeller.

In opposition were Gail Maholick, David Bradley and Richard Beltz. Joy Beers was absent.

Filer has been attending Lehighton board meetings for at least the past year, following William Schwab, who has been the district’s solicitor for decades.

Before the vote Monday, Bradley spoke out against extending the firm, citing 23 Pennsylvania School Code violations he believes took place while they were providing solicitor services.

Bradley criticized the district’s hiring of a Bethlehem law firm to deal with a legal matter regarding Right To Know requests that he had submitted and said it challenged the constitutionality of the Right To Know law.

“It was an illegal use of taxpayer funds,” Bradley argued.

Holland, meanwhile, said he would have been in favor of hiring Filer and Schwab for a one-year term as opposed to just four months.

“Hopefully they would take us up on that despite the turmoil created in this wonderful district by a few board members,” Holland said.

After the extension, Filer thanked the board for its vote of confidence and said he assumed the firm would be submitting a proposal to stay on should the district indeed put out a request for proposals.