Central Bucks School District. Photo by James Short.
A Plumstead Township resident thanked the Central Bucks School Board at its last August meeting for “being good stewards” of money regarding a civil rights lawsuit that ended in a hung jury this summer.
“I’m a practicing attorney, and sensitive to employees’ rights, and I don’t know the full engagement in terms of the class action lawsuit. As a taxpayer, it began to look like we were facing an increase in taxes,” said Daniel Grabianowski during the public comment period. “I appreciate the Board doing the right thing and staying with counsel. There was some tainting regarding the law firm that presented the old Board, but I appreciate you staying with the law firm and got the lawsuit dismissed.”
Back in 2021, teacher and plaintiff Dawn Marinello gathered 368 current and former female teachers that worked at Central Bucks School District over the past 23 years, and collectively filed a $119 million civil lawsuit against the district, claiming they were owed more than $48 million in back pay due to the district historically paying the male teachers higher salaries.
Central Bucks was facing the possibility of paying out a maximum $119 million, especially if it violated the Equal Pay Act, per Bucks County Courier Times. The lawsuit, among other things, alleged male teachers were given credit for past experiences, but women were not.
However, Central Bucks persisted on. At the time of Marinello’s filing, the district was amid another civil lawsuit from an English teacher named Becky Cartee-Haring, also claiming Equal Pay Act violations by the district, filed in 2020.
By April 2023, the district would be involved in a third civil lawsuit, this one a filed by the ACLU of PA on behalf of a Lenape Middle School teacher, claiming he was wrongfully suspended and the district failed to protect a transgender student from harassment.
Back in May 2024, a federal judge pushed the district to settle the Marinello lawsuit before the case heads to jury trial, as there was substantial likelihood the teachers would win, per the report.
However, on July 29, the trial would end in a hung jury, per court records. Post-trial, a juror revealed the jury was split 6-2 in the women’s favor, per The Inquirer.
According to law, the case can be tried again in the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, as no verdict was issued by a jury.
“Thank you for being good stewards of taxpayers’ dollars,” said Grabianowski.
Per The Inquirer, Cartee-Harding’s case will be tried separately and, as of July, was still pursuing the case.
“It’s disappointing. I’m not necessarily disappointed in the jury — there were a lot of very complicated details,” said Cartee-Haring in the Inquirer. “They have a decades-long problem here, and it’s not going away.”
In November 2023, Democrats swept a number of Moms For Liberty conservatives off the school board, turning the school board blue.
Earlier this year, in March, Central Bucks settled a lawsuit with teacher Andrew Burgess, a teacher with 15 years at Central Bucks who was wrongfully suspended in May 2022 by the school district. Burgess, prompted by a transgender student and their family, filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, according to the ACLU.
As part of the settlement, Central Bucks reinstated Burgess, compensated him with $100,000 in damages and covered his legal fees. The district also had to rectify false claims about Burgess in his personnel file, per the settlement.
The complaint centered on allegations that the district failed to address harassment faced by the transgender student by classmates, per the complaint. Thus, Burgess was suspended by the school board.
“Burgess also assisted teachers when school administrators began to censor teachers’ personal classroom library materials that dealt with LGBTQ themes. In the fall of 2021, he expressed his concerns to district leaders, and, when his building principal sought to meet individually with teachers who maintained a classroom library in March 2022, Burgess, who is a union leader, suggested that they be accompanied by a union representative,” said the ACLU in a statement on its website.
The ACLU said that the district hired the firm Duane Morris LLP “known for their anti-LGBTQIA+ stance” to investigate the claims. In the end, the current iteration of the Board had to approve a $1.14 million payment to the firm for its duties, of which only $250,000 will be paid by insurance.
When supervisors voted to approve the Burgess v CBSD settlement resolution in March, it passed 5-1, with Republican Board Director James Pepper dissenting.
“One of the main things that happened that the previous board did,” said former Board Vice President Dr. Mariam Mahmud after the March vote, “that was egregious was April 20 and they defamed a teacher and caused a lot of problems.”
Pepper said that an argument could be made that litigating a case like the Burgess case may, in the end, be more expensive than settling it at an early stage.
“Absolutely no depositions were taken in this matter. Not one. That for me is exceedingly problematic,” said Pepper, who is an attorney himself, following the vote at the March meeting. “It’s very, very strange, the things that happened over the course of this litigation. We had our insurance canceled at one point – if we had a real press, they would look into as to why that happened – and we had an issue with an attorney entering his appearance, where, in my perspective, there was a crystal clear conflict of interest.”
Pepper said the resolution of Burgess caused him great concern.
“I don’t understand how we can settle a case where we have yet to take a single deposition,” Pepper said.
Board Director Sue Gibson told Pepper she shared some of his concerns.
“Ultimately, I believe it is in the fiduciary interest of this district to approve the settlement,” Gibson said in March.
Pepper said there was a very good argument to be made from that. And then criticized the Bucks County Courier Times (“I don’t consider them a newspaper”) and The Philadelphia Inquirer (“That has become a joke of a newspaper”) for their coverage – or lack thereof, per Pepper – of the lawsuit.
“I’ve never seen anything like this (settlement), I mean never. If we had a real press – a real press, not a press that doesn’t just put their thumb on the scale, but a fist – they would be very, very interested in the ins and outs of what happened here. That doesn’t exist. They are not interested in anything that might be critical of certain people on this Board,” said Pepper, the sole Republican on the board. “There are things I’ve witnessed in this litigation that will happen again and again and again, and there will be no press coverage because they are a disgrace.”
After the March vote, Board President Karen Smith told Burgess he was “a respected and valued member of the staff” and looked forward to seeing him back in class.
“We are happy to have this dispute behind us. Mr. Burgess, we are all feeling that, while the resolution of the lawsuit may legally end the conflict, it doesn’t take away the pain you had to endure as a result of the questionable findings about you in the report and public presentation by the Duane Morris law firm,” Smith said in March. “We removed the video and any evidence of the report from the district website.”
