The Steel Valley school board reluctantly approved a $170,000 settlement Tuesday night with two male teachers who brought a federal gender discrimination lawsuit against the district.

The vote came six days after U.S. District Judge Nora Barry Fischer required the entire school board to appear before her and then took them to task for rejecting a settlement worked out in the case by the attorney for the district's insurance carrier.

School board members spent seven hours in front of the judge on Oct. 5. But they made it apparent last night they weren't happy with the situation.

"This board was prepared to spend the countless hours necessary to protect our school district from being destroyed, but after weighing the options the only one that made financial sense was to end the lawsuit by settling," board President Beth Cannon said in a prepared statement she read after the vote.

Mrs. Cannon stressed that the vote to approve the settlement was not an admission of guilt on the part of the district, and several board members said they did not believe the administration made any mistakes in the way it hired and paid teachers.

Board members also said there was no gender discrimination in the hirings.

Seven school directors voted in favor of the settlement. Director Michael Terrick voted against it and Director Don Bajus, who attended the meeting via phone, abstained.

Two teachers, Clay Karadus and Steven Large, filed suit in February claiming they were hired at the entry-level salary scale even though they had several years of teaching experience and that other female district teachers in similar situations started at higher pay steps.

Board members said the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission rejected the suit in June, but the district's insurance carrier handed the case to its attorney, Susan Roberts, to settle.

When Ms. Roberts brought the settlement to the board last month, it voted 6-1 against the settlement, opting instead to take the case to a jury. It was that vote that prompted the judge to call school directors to her courtroom.

District solicitor Donald Fetzko said the $170,000 will be split between the teachers and their attorney, Colleen Ramage Johnston.

Of the total, the district's insurance carrier, School Boards Insurance Company of Pennsylvania, will pay about $46,000, and the district will pay $124,000 from its general fund.

In addition, the district paid a $10,000 deductible to the insurance carrier to cover legal fees of $35,000 in the case.

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