The latest victims of the years-long payroll debacle that destabilized the San Francisco Unified School District — during which thousands of employees went underpaid, improperly paid or unpaid — would appear to be its youngest yet.
District youth-outreach workers are high school students hired as interns to evangelize to their peers about health and wellness matters such as nutrition, ergonomics and smoking cessation. They earn $18.93 an hour, with a ceiling of 70 hours a year, which translates into a maximum yearly payment of some $1,325. Considering that many of the youth-outreach workers are underprivileged, this is a welcome sum.
At least, it would be. Youth-outreach workers receive two paychecks a year, and the most recent should’ve been delivered on Dec. 27. For a number of them — including 12 at John O’Connell High School alone — paychecks were either light, late or nonexistent.
“I was expecting $300 or so. I worked all the hours possible,” O’Connell senior Henry Cruz said this week. “I didn’t get anything.”
For Cruz, this is not a trifling matter. Money, he says, is tight. He is responsible for obtaining his own clothes and meals. That paycheck was earmarked for “food for me.” For now, he’s getting by on money from his older brother.
Christina Lopez, who oversees the youth-outreach workers at O’Connell, this month wrote to the district about her students’ delinquent payments. She received a written reply, stating that “all students were sent out payments by SFUSD payroll on time” by Dec. 27 — and that the problem may lie with the post office.
If so, it marks a dark day for the United States Postal Service — one dozen O’Connell students alone were affected. What’s more, Mission Local obtained written accounts from youth-outreach coordinators at multiple other San Francisco campuses confirming that their students weren’t paid either. All told, youth-outreach workers at at least four campuses did not receive their December checks.
“Our understanding is that most Youth-Outreach Workers received their checks,” writes district spokesperson Laura Dudnick. “However, as soon as we learned that a few Youth-Outreach Workers did not receive their checks in the mail, we began the process of requesting checks to be reissued. We are reissuing the checks to those who did not receive them, and the Youth-Outreach Workers will receive their checks soon.”
“I was expecting $300 or so. I worked all the hours possible. I didn’t get anything.”
O’Connell senior Henry Cruz
It would be difficult to blame the post office, meanwhile, for the problems with O’Connell junior Danny Landaverde’s check. It reached him just fine, but he was only credited for 11 hours of work, when he put in far more than that.
“I was really expecting a good paycheck — maybe $600 or $700. I got less than $200,” he says. For Landaverde, who is saving up to buy a car, it was a demoralizing experience. “It just made me not want to come to the meetings anymore. In my head, it’s like, what’s the point? I’ll either not get paid, or paid the wrong amount.”
And that’s a gripe he can share with his teachers: In January 2022, the district debuted a new payroll system called EMPowerSF; it cost some $13.7 million out of the box and failed, immediately and catastrophically, by underpaying, mis-paying or just not paying thousands of district employees. After sinking more than $40 million into the system, the district may now scrap EMPowerSF altogether, perhaps as soon as this year.
The district, in fact, was months late this summer in sending a $1,600 stipend to community health outreach workers like Lopez, who oversee the youth-outreach workers.
“We sincerely apologize for the impact that this issue may have caused our Youth-Outreach Workers,” wrote Dudnick. “ We value the thought, time and effort that Youth-Outreach Workers put into their role, and are doing everything we can to rectify this situation.”
Dudnick insisted that all checks were mailed on Dec. 27. “Without wanting to speculate as to why the checks were not delivered in the mail to some students, we are now working to confirm that we have the correct mailing addresses for students.”
Youth-outreach workers are slated to attend a district-wide training session on Wednesday — and will be paid for their time. Several of the young workers, however, told Mission Local that they would not attend, due to lack of prior payment.
“It’s kind of my first job, so I wanted to get paid, obviously,” said O’Connell 10th grader Penelope Anderson.
Anderson’s mother is a teacher in the district. And while she has not yet been affected by the EMPower debacle, her paraeducators have been. “They don’t want to come in and help,” says Anderson. “She gets that.” Accordingly, Anderson had no plans to attend a work event on work time when she hadn’t been paid for her work.
“As an SFUSD alum, it pisses me off they have to go through this stuff,” says Lopez, O’Connell’s community health outreach worker, who graduated from Washington High in 2004 and was a youth-outreach worker herself.
“It really doesn’t take too much effort to pay these kids.”
So when is the City going to begin the process of suing the folks they brought us EMpowerSF for damages? Do we get any money back?
Such terrible mismanagement. SFUSD won’t sue, because that would admit wrongdoing, I assume?
Maybe it’s time the city take back control of the district, though maybe after the election. Not sure they’d do a better job.
Such a mess. Are there any state agencies that might intervene at this point?
This district is a sinking ship, with children on it, and it’s a shame.
My understanding is that the contract was so poorly written that EMpower fulfilled all their obligations the moment they handed the software over- which is as crazy as it sounds. No responsibility to handle the import of data for the old system or handle any troubleshooting after delivery.
Having run payroll for a multi-branch law firm 25 years ago, I can tell you from experience it’s not that hard. It’s just math. I cannot fathom how SFUSD was able to screw this up so poorly.
At this point, I’d suggest showing the door to everyone in the SFUSD payroll dept., the HR managers who hired them and replace the p/r team with 12th graders who’ve gotten at least a B in accounting.
Again, it’s not really that hard to calculate a paycheck and send in the withholding.
EmpowerSF is a criminal enterprise and not paying or underpaying interns is another example of this.
SFUSD paid 40 million for non working system sounds like business as usual in the city..nobody takes responsibility and blame others. Who reviewed this contract before signing off?
Why was the young man in photo allowed to flash gang sign?
Matt Wayne needs to be fired immediately. There is no longer any excuse to keep him in such a high paid position of power. He is guilty of many egregious decisions beyond the supposed “fixing” of the lousy InfoSys payroll debacle. Including renewing contracts with Teach for America and robbing arts, music, sports and libraries from our students.
He claims “limited resources” and that we must “aligning the budget to be fiscally responsible” yet has made horrendous decisions such as literally millions upon millions to outside consultants.
Please anyone reading this comment, understand that he is about to DEFUND sports, libraries, arts and music by raiding the Prop H / PEEF funds to cover his poor management decisions and ensuing budget crisis. The PEEF money is voter approved and paid into by local taxes.
Please do not let him get away with moving this ear marked money with no Accountability or oversight.
Write to the BOE TODAY!
More problems to come I’m sure as SFUSD still hasn’t paid staff their raise and said it could be “the end of March” before they do. Empower and a lack of HR/Payroll staff seem to be to blame.