In reply to mike mcadoo.

Here you come throwing dirt on reader’s eyes to distract from who’s job it is to guarantee well-compensated educators who are paid correctly and timely, and get trained to deliver quality education to SF students. The current BOE and Supe have haughty plans for visions and guardrails—but they too are unable to run a functional payroll department. As for the demographics comparison, you can’t do that in all honesty if you do not consider the number of families versus single residents in the 1970s and now.

In reply to Dale Carlson.

Here is an article regarding the Payroll System (SAP) and LA Unified Schools that happened in 2008. https://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-payroll11feb11-story.html

Software bugs, no test plans, and not training people that should manage
it. Plenty of blame to go around for this one SFUSD.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/sfusd-teacher-payroll-san-francisco-bureaucracy-18000777.php?utm_source=marketing&utm_medium=copy-url-link&utm_campaign=article-share&hash=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc2ZjaHJvbmljbGUuY29tL29waW5pb24vb3BlbmZvcnVtL2FydGljbGUvc2Z1c2QtdGVhY2hlci1wYXlyb2xsLXNhbi1mcmFuY2lzY28tYnVyZWF1Y3JhY3ktMTgwMDA3NzcucGhw&time=MTY4MzM4NTk2MTcyNA==&rid=ZDY1NDZjMzMtOTdkNi00M2NmLWE5ZjEtZjYxZDA0NTdhNWFj&sharecount=MQ==

This dysfunctional payroll system is a demonstration of the incompetence of the School District Administration, bad software, bad contract which requires the School District, not the software vendor to fix the problems. It begs for a tax payer lawsuit. The no pay, late pay, wrong pay, no pension contribution, wrong pension contributions, aren’t just inconvenient, they violate the California Labor Codes and Regulations. More than a year in and horror story after horror story – where are the government oversight bodies? There are any number of California State bodies: the SF Healthcare System which fails it’s fiduciary obligation to the school employees to see if their benefits cut offs are appropriate; the teachers pension entity, CalSTRS, failing it’s fiduciary obligation to the teachers to see that the pension contributions are timely and correct. No investigations by any of these government entities when, assuming they care to do their jobs, they know it’s a mess. This is a foul mess where failure and indolence abound and yet it doesn’t have to be that way.

As a technical matter, the School District Administration should have created spreadsheets or database programs to catch the errors as the payroll and benefit runs are performed, comparing expected results to actual results and thus immediately catch the anamolies so they could be quickly rectified. Anybody with access to the payroll data and benefit contribution data, which is to say the School District, or their unions as these unions have the legal right to this data, and moderate Excel skills could do this in less than an hour per payroll or benefits cycle. Someone who had skill in database development could automate this process. In technical terms, it’s looking for non-matches. That something this simple and this important hasn’t been done, calls for heads to roll.

In reply to snelson123.

The district is paying. From what I read elsewhere, the software vendor was poor (despite the cost) and the SFUSDs management of the project must have been poor. When you implement a new system, especially a financial one, there are a bunch of standards for testing that it sounds like were not followed. For example, you run a few real payrolls in the old system, and at the same time run them as a test in the new EMPower system (without the checks / direct deposits). Have accountants compare the real and test payrolls, not until they match do you go live with the new system.

I’m still searching for the District’s justification of a boutique payroll system. There are scores of public and private entities with much larger numbers of employees, and several large companies that specialize in payroll services. Why build a custom system??

In reply to snelson123.

I don’t work for or have shares of ADT or Paychex or any of the other payroll outfits but I note you never see small businesses having this problem. It’s always municipal governments and school districts who get lured by the promise of “boutique” payrolls.

This debacle was years in the making. The School Board members who
were ousted were more interested in virtue signaling than in the well being
of the teachers and the education of the students. They wanted to change
the name of 44 schools, but were negligent about, for instance, the rodent
infested Horace Mann school. They wanted to program rather than
monitor the well being and progress of the SFUSD.
In 1970, San Francisco had a population of around 720,000, the SFUSD
had 92,000 students. Now, in 2023, with a population of 815,000 ( down
from 875,000 in 2020 census), the SFUSD has less than 49,000 students.
A decrease of almost 47 %! The SFUSD became a tier for aspiring
politicians. The former Board wanted to dumb down students in the
name of “equity and equality”, not effort and merit, as evidenced by
the Lowell admissions controversy.
Well, San Francisco, you have reaped what you have sown.
And it will require a generation to undue the damage- to the
school system, and more importantly, the students.

The article touches on one of the most prevalent factors in this for all SFUSD employees. Before EMPower, each school, department and division had a specific staff member who was trained to navigate and enter time sheets for everyone else on the team. If you had questions they usually knew the answer or knew who to ask. Now that all SFUSD employees are required to enter and track their own payroll, sick days, substitutes and healthcare costs they get to see, day-to-day how much they aren’t getting paid to do. It’s easier to work 11 hours and accept getting paid for 8 when someone else handles the time keeping business process and you get a complete and correct check when you are supposed to.

I’d still like to know who’s footing the bill for all the costs related to the EmPower debacle. If it’s the District, why? Did they make substantive changes in the specs that resulted in EmPower having to drastically reprogram things? If there were no substantive changes in the specs and the District is still paying all the costs, that’s a huge issue.

Nothing will else will move the bureaucratic stagnation of SFUSD. Each assistant superintendent of blah-blah is working overtime to protect their butts/pet-programs/friends. The board, for the most part, is doing the same, as is the Sup. The central office needs to be cleared out completely. They are incompetent or corrupt. Time to clean house. If a strike gets what the teachers’ need, then great. If it puts the champions of the status quo on notice, even better. Solidarity.

I don’t know if it’s possible to overstate the negative impact of the EMPower debacle. It’s been a huge loss of money, time, and morale across the district.