The Weatherly Area school board approved a four-year contract with the Weatherly Area Educational Support Personnel Association at Wednesday evening’s public meeting.

The board voted 7-1 in favor of the new deal, with board member Gerard Grega voting no and board member Amy Potsko absent from the meeting.

Grega, who attended the meeting via speakerphone, voted against the contract because he says he was never sent a final version of the contract to review.

The contract calls for 38 cents-per-hour raises for every member of the support staff in each of the four years of the contract.

Current hourly wages range from $8.79 per hour for general cafeteria staff to $16.53 per hour for a health room assistant.

Those rates include the 2018-19 raise of 38 cents per hour.

Since the dollar figure of the raises are set, rather than a percentage increase, each position will see a different increase as a percent of their current wages. The 38 cents represents a 4.5 percent increase in the first year for general cafeteria staff but a 2.3 percent raise for the health room assistant.

The year-over-year percentage increases will be lower for all positions in the second, third and fourth years of the contract.

Those percentages fall to 3.9 percent and 2.1 percent respectively in the final year of the contract.