L.A. schools’ pay errors continue

About 5,000 Los Angeles teachers and other employees are expected to receive inaccurate paychecks today, marking another month of persistent problems with a new computerized payroll system.

Supt. David L. Brewer cautioned employees, who have so far been overpaid by $53 million, not to spend the money as the Los Angeles Unified School District prepares to recoup it.

“My job is very simple: get people paid correctly and on time,” Brewer said, speaking at a morning news conference. “And that’s what I am trying to achieve. We clearly, clearly understand the frustration out there. . . . We are very close to getting this system corrected.”

As in past months, the vast majority of the mistakes are overpayments; about 300 others are underpayments, school district officials said. The number of errors this month showed no decline from the last two paydays.

Brewer also vowed that by next month the district would reconcile how much money each of the tens of thousands of employees who have been overpaid owe the district. Amid widespread confusion and distrust over the amounts being tallied by the flawed computer system, district officials have been holding off on recouping those funds. At least 1,500 employees have been overpaid by more than $5,000, district documents show.

With the end of the year approaching, Brewer and school board members have been under increasing pressure to rectify the overpayments before the district issues inaccurate income tax forms that would wreak havoc as employees try to file their state and federal taxes.

To buy more time, the district is considering a plan to designate overpayments as no-interest loans that would not be counted as income, said David Holmquist, the district’s interim chief operational officer.

Brewer urged people who believe they have received too much pay: “Don’t spend the money! Put it in an interest-bearing account, but don’t spend the money.”

He added that district officials were continuing to work with union leaders to settle on how and when the money would be recouped.

Brewer said he anticipated that the technological glitch at the root of the problem would be fixed before the next payday in November, but left open the possibility that it could take longer. Teachers and most all of the nearly 100,000 district employees are paid monthly.

A key part of a comprehensive, $95-million technology upgrade, the payroll system has been hampered since it launched at the beginning of the year.

As the scope of the problems became apparent, district officials acknowledged that the system had not been properly programmed to handle all the various assignments and pay scales in the district and that it had been rushed into operation without proper training for clerks and timekeepers.

District leaders were caught unprepared. They scrambled to open emergency hotlines and help centers that were immediately overwhelmed with angry employees, while also struggling to identify the bugs in the complex software programs.

“We didn’t roll it out right,” Brewer said. “Bottom line, we just didn’t roll it out right.”

The repair efforts and delays to the next phase of the upgrade are expected to cost about $45 million.

In recent months, the district has appeared to make headway on fixing some of the computer snafus and in improving how effectively it responds to the monthly wave of bad checks. Teacher union leaders, however, have continued to rail against Brewer and his staff for not acting more quickly. They have called on teachers to boycott some after-school meetings and threatened widespread walkouts during class time.

Brewer declined to comment on the ongoing negotiations with Deloitte Consulting, the international firm hired to implement each part of the computer grade, over what, if any, blame the firm deserves for the breakdown.

joel.rubin@latimes.com