An apparently $1 million lawsuit settlement in the Richland School District sends a strong message not only to our region’s schools, but to the entire workplace.
That is, you had better pay working men and women equally.
We know that’s not always the case. Shame on those who think or do otherwise.
The Richland district, in an out-of-court settlement, will pay $460,000 to 22 female teachers who claimed in a federal lawsuit that they were the victims of sex discrimination and were due back wages.
The attorney for the teachers said that, with lawyer fees and other incidentals, “the total package is probably worth more than $1 million.”
Never mind that Richland’s top administrator said “there’s no admission of guilt on the district’s part.”
That doesn’t matter.
What does is that the teachers who felt they had been wronged, won, and the district lost.
The real losers, however, are the Richland taxpayers, whose hard-earned dollars will be used to reimburse the teachers, $22,900 on average, but as much as $50,000 a person in some cases.
Residents have every right to be angry. Folks they had trusted in the past dropped the ball.
Current administrators say steps are being taken – including establishing a more cut-and-dried policy – to make sure such discrimination never happens again.
That’s commendable – and smart.
In a nutshell, the teachers claimed that they were not given proper credit on the salary scale for prior teaching experience outside the district at, for example, out-of-state or Catholic schools.
Their male counterparts were hired at a higher pay level, they said.
Carl Beard of Altoona, the district’s attorney, noted that only a few similar lawsuits have been litigated in Pennsylvania, but that “they have had significant impact on those Pittsburgh area school districts. Both sides agreed to come to terms.”
We hope every school board in our region reviews the details of this case at their next meeting.
If a policy isn’t in place to avoid what happened at Richland, we urge they get to work immediately on adopting one.
And although we wouldn’t expect any ramifications against any of the suing teachers, we would urge Richland administrators to make sure there aren’t.
It could be disastrous.
“We put it behind us and are looking forward,” Superintendent Thomas Fleming said.
That’s good advice for everyone to follow.
