Support staff at Lehighton Area School District have a new four-year contract after the school board approved the agreement Monday night by an 8-1 vote, with board member David Bradley casting the lone dissent.

The contract with the Lehighton Area Educational Support Personnel Association covers July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2030, and affects custodians, paraprofessionals, secretaries, nurses, cafeteria workers, network analysts, behavioral support staff and other non-professional employees.

“The compensation outlined in this four-year agreement includes a $1.50 an hour raise in the first year for support staff members, and $1.25 an hour in the last years of the contract,” Superintendent Jason Moser said before the vote.

The contract also calls for employees to contribute 4% of the premium share toward their health insurance.

Based on 2026-27 rates outlined in the contract, a full-time employee with family PPO coverage will pay $70.28 per biweekly pay period. The district’s monthly equivalent rate for family coverage is $3,806.72. Employees with single PPO coverage will pay $24.23 per pay period.

Starting wages increase across all classifications. Paraprofessionals will start at $18.33 an hour in 2026-27, up from $17.58. Custodians move from $16.22 to $16.97 an hour, and nurses from $25.96 to $26.71. By the contract’s final year, paraprofessionals’ starting wage reaches $20.28 an hour and custodians’ reaches $18.92.

Part-time cleaners receive a smaller increase of 75 cents per hour in each year of the contract. Behavioral technicians, whose starting wage holds at $30.10 throughout all four years, are the one classification that sees no increase under the agreement.

Before the vote, Moser praised the support staff negotiations committee.

“I want to thank them for coming to the table with the ability to be realistic, thoughtful and land at a spot where I feel like we are definitely honoring the work that our support staff does, because it is the backbone of so many aspects of our district,” Moser said. “Hopefully they feel as if this treats them fairly, while also being something that is affordable to the district and to taxpayers in the long run.”

Moser added that many support staff members were in the room Monday and noted the negotiations had a “very positive tenor in the room all the way across.”

The vote came only after a pointed exchange over whether the district had complied with Pennsylvania’s Sunshine Act.

Bradley questioned why the negotiations committee held meetings that were not advertised and from which other board members were excluded. He cited the act’s language covering “the body and all committees thereof authorized by the body to take official action or render advice.”

“If you want to call it personnel and make it an executive session, you still have to invite the entire board, and you still have to advertise,” Bradley said.

District solicitor Jeff Sultanik pushed back, drawing a distinction between the negotiations committee and a standing board committee.

“The bargaining committee is not a standing committee of the board; it was the equivalent of an ad hoc committee,” Sultanik said. “Either way, a committee can have an executive session without inviting the entire board under these circumstances. Collective bargaining is exempt from coverage under the Sunshine Act.”