A former North Chicago High School science teacher will receive $115,000 as part of a settlement agreed to by North Chicago Community Unit School District 187’s oversight boards.

The lawsuit, filed by longtime teacher Susan McGuire in August 2014, was one of three employment lawsuits filed against the district that point, at least in part, to performance reviews administered under the same former principal.

The two state-appointed governing bodies that oversee the district agreed earlier this year to pay out more than $125,000 to former physical education teacher Eric Liva, who said he had been discriminated against because of his age. Another pending lawsuit filed by a former music teacher also alleges discrimination based on her age.

McGuire, a teacher with the district for more than 20 years, was laid off from the district at the end of the 2013-14 school year as part of a move by the advisory boards to eliminate 19 positions, including two at the high school, in order to eliminate $2.8 million from the budget of the financially struggling district, according to an affidavit by then-executive director of human resources Martha Gutierrez.

The teachers who were laid off were selected through a state-mandated process that grouped teachers based on their evaluations, she said in the affidavit.

McGuire received a “needs improvement” rating by then-principal Eric Gallagher in 2013, which led to her honorable dismissal the following year, according to court documents submitted by both McGuire and the district.

McGuire alleges in her lawsuit that the evaluation — which she said was based on false statements — was part of an effort to terminate her employment, pointing to previous evaluations in which she had been rated “excellent/proficient” and an observation conducted earlier in the school year by Gallagher that resulted in no negative feedback, according to the complaint and an affidavit submitted by McGuire.

The district did not give McGuire a professional development plan or evaluate her the next year as required by law, something McGuire argues should prevent the district from using the poor evaluation to lay her off, according to court documents.

The district did not evaluate McGuire the following year at her request, according to district filings. The district also notes that no objections were filed disputing the evaluation itself or her placement on the list of teachers to be laid off.

McGuire had been assigned to teach earth science that year, a course she had not taught before and one the Lake County Regional Office of Education ultimately found she was not qualified to teach, according to the filing. The teachers union, on behalf of McGuire, filed a grievance requesting that McGuire not be formally evaluated.

The district also argued that even if McGuire had been evaluated that year, she still would have been laid off because state law looks at the last two rankings to determine which teachers are laid off first.

McGuire also alleges in her lawsuit that the district did not hire her back as required by state law when a science teacher position became available, according to the complaint.

The position was for a teacher qualified to teach physics, chemistry and earth science, the last of which McGuire did not have qualifications to teach and so the district did not hire her back, according to district filings.

School districts are not allowed to rearrange teaching assignments in a way to “defeat the rights of tenured teachers,” McGuire argues in one of her court filings, noting that she was qualified to teach more than 50 percent of the assigned courses that year.

The school district has “paid very close attention” to ensuring that the process the district undertakes when laying off teachers is “very rigorous and objective,” Deputy Superintendent of Instruction Joel Pollack said this week. The administration that oversaw McGuire’s evaluation process is not longer with the district.

McGuire’s attorney, Gail Mrozowski, was not available for comment this week.