Teachers and other employees at Fort Bend Independent School District are upset over a series of administrative mistakes and technical glitches that adversely affected their finances:
→ Sept. 15 employee paychecks at Fort Bend County’s largest employer did not reflect a raise of about 3.25% that the Fort Bend ISD Board of Trustees approved Aug. 27.
→ The Sept. 15 paychecks for employees who missed days of work also did not reflect credit for sick time or approved leaves of absence.
→ More than a month after board trustees approved the pay raise, teachers and other workers say they still don’t know exactly how much their individual raises amount to.
Fort Bend ISD was closed on Friday, and officials didn’t immediately respond to calls for comment. However, several memos and email from administrators provide insight into payroll problems at the district, which employs between 9,000 and 10,000 people.
On Sept. 13, two days before payroll checks were to have been released, Fort Bend ISD Human Resources Executive Director Dana Cooper sent out a memo telling employees their upcoming paychecks would be calculated at pre-pay raise rates.
Cooper did not explain why paychecks would not include the new raises, saying simply, “We are working diligently to input those raises into the payroll system.”
According to Cooper’s memo, employees’ late September paychecks would be calculated including the raise. “In addition, each employee will receive a ‘retroactive increase’ on Sept. 30,” Cooper said. (Several employees said their second September check actually came on Sept. 27, not Sept. 30.)
“The retroactive increase will be the difference between the amount which each employee has been paid since the beginning of his or her new salary year and the amount which would have been paid had the new rates been incorporated in paychecks issued during the new salary year,” Cooper said in the somewhat confusing memo.
The human resources director also said each employee would receive a “salary notice letter” on or before Sept. 30, “detailing their new compensation rates.”
But that hasn’t happened. Instead, the district’s Business & Finance Department issued an email to Fort Bend ISD employees on Thursday saying the salary notice letter will not be delivered along with Sept. 27 paychecks, “due to a technology glitch.” However, the district said, “we have identified the problem and are currently working to fix it.”
To add fuel to the fire, many employees appear not to have seen Cooper’s Sept. 13 memo.
After “a number” of employees contacted the district’s payroll and human resources departments to find out why their Sept. 15 paychecks were short, Fort Bend ISD Chief Financial Officer Mike Seale was prompted to prepare a “Question and Answer” document he sent to all employees.
In that document, Seale indicated the fact the board didn’t approve raises until Aug. 27 played a roll in the payroll snafu.
“Under normal procedures, processing for a payroll begins at least 10 and sometimes as much as 14 days prior to the pay date,” he said in the document. “It was not possible to calculate every employee’s new salary and incorporate it into the Sept. 15 payroll.”
In his “Questions and Answers” document, Sealey said absences went unpaid despite valid sick time and other earned time off because “in converting from one school year to the next, the summary was inadvertently deleted from all Sept. 15 paychecks. Fortunately, that data has not been deleted from the district’s database and will be reinstated…”
The district’s paycheck woes didn’t end on Sept. 15. Several employees say they received at least a portion of their Sept. 27 pay in the form of checks post-dated Oct. 15.
Seale issued letters to employees’ banks, dated Thursday, citing “a recent payroll processing error” and asking banks to “please do not put a hold on this check.”
Some teachers and employees blamed an understaffed human resources department for the series of payroll mistakes. Said one, “people just aren’t happy.”
→ Sept. 15 employee paychecks at Fort Bend County’s largest employer did not reflect a raise of about 3.25% that the Fort Bend ISD Board of Trustees approved Aug. 27.
→ The Sept. 15 paychecks for employees who missed days of work also did not reflect credit for sick time or approved leaves of absence.
→ More than a month after board trustees approved the pay raise, teachers and other workers say they still don’t know exactly how much their individual raises amount to.
Fort Bend ISD was closed on Friday, and officials didn’t immediately respond to calls for comment. However, several memos and email from administrators provide insight into payroll problems at the district, which employs between 9,000 and 10,000 people.
