More than 300 female teachers say Central Bucks underpaid them compared with men

When her contract wasn’t renewed as girls’ lacrosse coach at Central Bucks West High School, Becky Cartee-Haring was surprised to hear coworkers say the school district wouldn’t have done this to a man.

“I said, ‘Do you really think that?’” said Cartee-Haring, an English teacher at West.

The discussion led to Cartee-Haring filing Right-to-Know requests for salaries of male teachers and coaches — and a pay equity lawsuit against the Central Bucks School District. Then a second teacher filed a lawsuit, in a case now joined by 360 current and former Central Bucks teachers who say they’re owed millions by the district.

The district, which enrolls 17,000 students and is Pennsylvania’s third-largest, denies the claims. At a school board meeting last week, a district lawyer said settling with the women would cost individual taxpayers an average of $3,500 — or require furloughs of nurses, teachers, coaches, guidance counselors, mental health workers, administrators, and support staff.

The case has implications for districts across the region. And with school board elections in November, it’s become a heated debate: Cartee-Haring’s husband, Rick Haring, is running as a Democrat for the board.

The cases started with Cartee-Haring seeking an explanation for the termination of her contract as West’s lacrosse coach in 2019. Talking with coworkers, she learned of some male coaches who were placed at or near the top of the district’s salary scale when hired.

That didn’t sound right to Cartee-Haring, who didn’t get full credit for her nine years of prior teaching experience when she was hired by Central Bucks in 2007, resulting in a lower placement on the scale. She remembers being told that was the district’s practice.

In requesting district records and examining Pennsylvania Department of Education salary data, Cartee-Haring began to find disparities, with men receiving higher placements than women.

In a lawsuit filed in April 2020, Cartee-Haring said that when she was hired in 2007 after teaching high school English for nine years in Hatboro-Horsham, she was placed at the fifth step on the scale, with a salary of $54,100; she should have been at the 10th step, with a salary of $66,650, the suit says.

In contrast, a male teacher hired to teach high school social studies in 2010 with 14 years of teaching experience — not all at the high school level — was placed at the 16th step. His salary was $101,810, according to the lawsuit, which says the pay was also based on credits that his job application didn’t indicate he had.

Cartee-Haring’s case — which says her salary was $94,991 in 2019-2020, but would have been $104,034 if she were given full credit for her experience — also accuses the district of discrimination in ending her coaching contract.

In spring of 2021, Cartee-Haring said she heard from another teacher. Dawn Marinello, also an English teacher in the district, who had spent 14 years teaching in the Wissahickon, Hatboro-Horsham, and Cheltenham districts. (Her tenure wasn’t consecutive; she also worked in the pharmaceutical industry.)

But she was hired at the rate of a first-year teacher when she joined Central Bucks in 2016, with a salary of $51,157, as opposed to the $98,379 a 15-year teacher with a master’s degree would have made under the district’s scale, according to Marinello.

She sued the district in June 2021. After a hearing a year later with testimony that eight women had been underpaid based on their years of experience, compared with 26 men who were overpaid, U.S. District Judge Michael Baylson certified the case as a collective action — allowing all female teachers employed by Central Bucks from 2000 onward to opt in if they hadn’t received full credit for their prior teaching experience.

He also advised the district to consider settling, according to the hearing transcript.

“Maybe you should discuss this with your client of having this review, and making adjustments where they’re appropriate, rather than fighting this lawsuit, which is obviously very expensive for both parties to do,” Baylson told a lawyer for the district.

“Central Bucks has always maintained a commitment to recruiting the most qualified candidates, regardless of gender, and is vigorously defending these claims,” Superintendent Abram Lucabaugh said during a Sept. 12 school board meeting, before a district lawyer addressed a settlement demand issued by the women in the collective action.

The Sept. 1 demand asked for all plaintiffs still working for the district to receive immediate salary increases to fully account for their years of experience — “something the school district doesn’t do on a uniform basis,” lawyer Michael Levin said.

They also asked for $119 million — $94 million in lost wages and damages, and $25 million in lawyers’ fees. If the district lost at trial, plaintiffs said, those costs could exceed $200 million.

Levin isn’t recommending the district settle. “My assessment of the facts ... is there’s no unlawful discrimination,” Levin said, adding that the district has yet to present its evidence.

As for what the settlement demand would cost the district, Levin said there were two options: raise taxes or cut services.

Covering the $119 million through taxes would increase the average tax bill by $3,500 — a 50% hike, Levin said. If the district were to cover only half of the cost through taxes, he said, it would have to make cuts — outlining a scenario in which 10 nurses, 25 teachers, five guidance counselors, 10 administrators, five mental health workers and 50 other staff would be furloughed, among other reductions.

Levin started his presentation by noting that a school board candidate — Rick Haring — had written an op-ed deeming it “irresponsible for the district to litigate this when the stakes are $100 million of taxpayers’ money.” (In the Bucks County Beacon piece, Haring also criticized Lucabaugh’s nearly 40% raise.)

Republicans have accused Haring of having a conflict of interest, given his wife’s role in the litigation.

If elected, “I would obviously be recused from any decisions affecting my wife’s case,” Haring said on his campaign website. But he said he “would have a profound interest” in the collective action, both as a financial matter and “because I am a father of two daughters, a husband of a female teacher, and a person with a moral code.”

Accusing the Harings of pressuring the district to settle, Paul Martino, a parent and GOP donor whose wife, Aarati Martino, is a Republican running against Haring, called the couple “grifters” during last week’s meeting.

Martino also alleged that Rick Haring had lied on his candidate financial disclosure form by disclosing no debts. He cited a tweet earlier this year from Cartee-Haring, in which she said she was seeking back pay from the district and $300,000 for lawyers’ fees.

But Cartee-Haring said she’s already paid those fees and owes nothing to lawyer Ed Mazurek. (In addition to her equal pay and discrimination case, Cartee-Haring also sued the district last year for retaliation.)

Cartee-Haring said she hasn’t sought to settle her equal-pay case since fall 2020, when she asked for $265,000 in back pay and the $300,000 in fees. She said the district offered her $5,000 — and said she would have to resign.

Mazurek, meanwhile, said he’s repeatedly sought to settle the larger case, including before it was certified as a collective action. He accused the district of seeking to “vilify” the teachers.

“These are not strangers, these are their employees,” he said.