San Francisco teachers rally over unpaid wages ahead of school year

SAN FRANCISCO - Teacher frustrations are once again boiling over at San Francisco public schools over payroll problems that educators say have left some of them thousands of dollars short.

Continued frustrations

What we know:

Members of the United Educators of San Francisco union rallied Tuesday outside San Francisco Unified School District headquarters to protest what they describe as incorrect paychecks, just days before the first day of the school year. The protest comes after the district spent millions of dollars replacing its old payroll system, Empower, with a new platform called Frontline. The switch was intended to fix previous payroll issues, but union officials say it has created fresh ones.

"I am owed over $6,000 that I was supposed to be paid several weeks ago," said Leslie Hu, an SFUSD community school coordinator.

Union leaders said they warned district officials months ago about potential problems with the transition.

"We see a crisis coming, we need to know what is the plan," said Frank Lara, the union’s vice president. "The initial conversations with the district were very dismissive."

What they're saying:

According to the union, some employee payroll details were not properly transferred into the new system, resulting in incorrect paychecks. They say about 100 paraeducators are missing more than $1,000 each in vacation pay, while other teachers are short between $2,000 to $3,000.

"I have to pay late fees for the rent, late fees for the credit card, and interest for it," said paraeducator Liayao Zhu. 

Superintendent Maria Su said more than 97% of paychecks have been issued correctly since the transition and that the district has added staff to resolve problems.

"We are working really quickly to address concerns and on day one we opened a call center," said Su. "As of last night, there were 750 tickets, and we have resolved 650 of them."

Su added that the majority of school districts across California use the pay system.

"It is a system that is used by over 60% of school districts up and down the state of California. The problem is transition," said Su, noting that many of the problems are due to insufficient training of teachers in how to enter data correctly. 

The Union meantime, has filed an unfair labor practice complaint with the California Public Employment Relations Board.  

"This is a formal legal demand against the district," said Lara. "We are not going to stand idly by to see this district’s mismanagement and lack of accountability force instability onto our schools."

In a statement to KTVU, School Board President Phil Kim said, "Any discrepancies in paychecks can be alarming, especially given the history of our payroll challenges. It’s critically important that issues get resolved quickly. Implementation of any new software will have its challenges, but I’m encouraged to hear that over 97% of the paychecks issued as of today have been accurate. We owe it to our all of our staff to ensure their pay is on whole and on time. EmPower was a disaster. We will get Frontline right."