The Edinburg school trustees heard updates on the district’s troubled switch to a new payroll system Monday, a process one trustee called a “fiasco” that led to payroll delays and millions of dollars in overpayments to employees.
The Edinburg Consolidated Independent School District’s payroll issues began in July, with the first of three payrolls that processed late or, in the case of the Aug. 24 payroll, contained errors.
Those errors included thousands of employees being paid nothing at all or being paid more than they earned for that pay period.
The fallout from three irregular payrolls in July and August prompted the district to bring in consultants last week to help district employees adapt to the system, although administrators said Monday that they likely wouldn’t know whether September’s payroll would be regular until sometime next week.
Payroll Director Zelda Lopez told the board Monday that all of those payroll issues stemmed from adjusting to a new system.
“The system is — it’s different from what we’ve processed in the past,” she said.
The most problematic of the three payroll issues appears to have been the Aug. 24 payroll. Despite errors in the payroll, Lopez said her department moved forward with it to meet its deadline.
Out of 4,762 monthly staff, she said 1,762 received an overpayment. As of Saturday, 523 of them have come forward to the district.
Among those overpaid employees were eight individuals with non-standard contracts and calendars that had not been updated who received a full salary, Lopez said.
Trustee Letty Garcia said one employee was paid as much as $74,000 and that the total amount overpaid could exceed $4 million.
“And the reason I bring all of this up is not only because of the employee, but also because this is taxpayer dollars,” she said. “It’s an excessive amount of over $3 million, close to $4 million. Possibly even more. And that’s why I’m bringing this out.”
Lopez said a detailed log accounts for those payroll variants and that money being returned is being deposited as quickly as possible.
The payroll department faced board criticism for not reaching out for more help with the transition and for moving forward with that erroneous payment despite it being incorrect.
“So why are we submitting something that’s gonna make us look horrible?” Trustee Xavier Salinas asked. “We should just say, ‘You know what, we’re not submitting. Dr. Salinas, we have a major problem.’”
Lopez told the board the district has been converting to the new system for months, although trustees said kinks in the program should have been worked out before it went live.
“That’s what I think really happened, is we just waited too long to try something new, which causes this payroll fiasco here at our school district,” Salinas said.
The board also voiced concern over Sept. 15 and 23, the dates of the district’s next bi-weekly and monthly payrolls. Jesse Muniz, Lopez’s acting supervisor, said he’s hopeful those payrolls will go smoothly, but that it likely won’t be clear until sometime next week.
“It’s a new system, a new car,” he said. “You know, we’re learning how to drive it; we’ve been driving the old ‘56 for a number of years, this one has a lot of new gidgets, and we’re trying to figure out what they mean.”
Despite the criticism, trustees sympathized with the burden on the payroll department and some described it as a learning situation the district could grow from.
The presentation ended with a round of applause for the payroll department’s work during the pandemic.
“For God sakes, if we put a man on the moon 55 years ago, we can get payroll right,” Board President Mike Farias said. “So let’s go ahead and do it.”
RELATED READING:
Consultants brought in to address ECISD payroll snags; Some reportedly paid nearly $30K
