‘We Are Sorry to Inform You’

The letter from the Los Angeles Unified School District was sent to my husband on Jan. 29 and read, “We are sorry to inform you that an audit of your salary payment has shown that you have been overpaid the gross amount of $1441.94.” The writer asked my husband to contact the time reporter at his school, who could then contact the respective payroll technician if he had any further questions. The letter explained that the overpayment was due to a “change of basis from ‘J’ to ‘C,’ and although this was an “inconvenience,” we should understand that errors do happen in a “payroll system as complex as that of the LAUSD,” and that they are “required by law to recover this payment.” And P.S., “How did we want to pay it back?”

How about in pennies?

The letter said that we would receive a letter from the collections unit, detailing our payback options. There was no warning that this might happen when my husband transferred from a traditional track school in South-Central to a year-round track in Echo Park. In layman’s terms, “J” and “C” pay scales have to do with how the hours are recorded, so that it all comes out to the correct salary by the year’s fiscal end.

He decided to change schools last August because his new school is five minutes from our home and his 1981 Honda Civic with 200,000-plus miles could no longer make the daily trek to South-Central. He also made the change knowing we would have to take a $4,500 pay cut by dropping E.I.S.--an urban classroom teacher program, worth $2,000 a year, which adds 2 1/2 hours to a teacher’s week, and a multilingual classroom differential worth $2,500 a year.

Now we are slapped with the overpayment notice. How were we to know he was overpaid? It’s this quagmire of disorganization that makes men like my husband, an elementary school teacher, consider leaving the profession.

This frustrating turn of events is certainly not the first such experience with the LAUSD. One pay period, they decided they’d made a mistake with his check and withdrew the money from our checking account without informing us, because we had direct deposit. We had to go down to the district to get a new check reissued after proving that he had worked those hours. It took several weeks to prove that it was their mistake and get them to repay the money.

These kinds of dealings come without warning. If a teacher transfers to another school, why isn’t there some kind of procedure to warn of glitches? It leaves us in a frightening situation. Do we pay rent or do we pay back the LAUSD?

What if the federal government asked the LAUSD for 4% of its money to be returned until later in the year? My husband asked the time reporter if he could just work eight days for free when he goes off-track, but she said she didn’t think the LAUSD would like that arrangement. They prefer it in cash. So we wait for the letter detailing our options. Perhaps one of the options will be considering a new profession.