There have been ongoing issues with payroll for staff-stipends not being paid in a timely manner, federal taxes not being taken out, not being paid on time. I worked for CPS for a year and they never paid me for 2 days of work despite me trying to tackle the bureaucracy. Ever since Linda Harries retired, staff have had to scrutinize their paychecks to make sure they were paid correctly-it feels more and more like CPS-my job is to teach not do payroll’s job for them!
They didn't send information letting us know what was going on. Nobody even apologized. Couldn't get through to payroll. Couldn't get through to central office administrators who were all out. Murphy or Goren would have come in to direct but, oh yeah, they live in Evanston and they cared about their employees.
The District statement says the software went out for other school districts. Can we find out if these other districts also had payroll problems?
Yes it is the board’s responsibility.
We should never hesitate to remind people that the superintendent runs the day to day operations for the district and is also ultimately responsible. This is the second superintendent in a row to come to Evanston with no experience as the top executive in a secretive process.
I wonder if they had applicants in the past pools with experience dealing with payroll, or school construction for that matter.
Is the board hiring the best candidates to run the district? Why do we have two people in a row without top managerial experience?
I've been trying to find other districts with problems but have come up empty .. but I don't know the name of the software vendor (still looking into this).
Regarding who does what - one thing I've been thinking about a lot is like - the board generally views their role as setting the budgets and hiring the superintendent. But like, I don't think that's working.
I don't understand how the District is so bad at the most basic function - paying your employees on time and the right amount. It demonstrates an absolute lack of competency and if I was on the Board, I'd be losing my mind over this. The Citizens of Evanston give this District $150 million bucks and they can't even pay the staff properly. Insane.
I reached out to the company that runs the system for comment because I haven't been able to find another District with the same outage this week. More to come.
Not one member of the board has any financial background. All of them are in the education industry or are consultants for education, not a single board member has any other skill set. Angela Blaising would have been phenomenal on the board and would have held the administration to task as she was a CFO, but she was raked through the mud. I just can’t believe with 60%+ of our taxes going to the school districts there isn’t ANY oversight and more Evanstonians aren’t outraged.
This isn't even a financial thing, this is like someone should be reading the Superintendent the riot act at the Board Meeting. Missing payrolls is *serious fucking business* and every taxpayer, regardless of your politics should be completely outraged at this. Employees could miss rent payments, miss court payments, get late fees from banks, miss insurance payments, etc. The absolute bare minimum we should be doing is making sure our public servants get a check on time.
If I was on the Board, I would make the Superintendent testify to what happened here in public and get her gaurantee that the problem won't happen again and if it does, there have to be consequences! The Superintendent works for YOU not the other way around.
There have been ongoing issues with payroll for staff-stipends not being paid in a timely manner, federal taxes not being taken out, not being paid on time. I worked for CPS for a year and they never paid me for 2 days of work despite me trying to tackle the bureaucracy. Ever since Linda Harries retired, staff have had to scrutinize their paychecks to make sure they were paid correctly-it feels more and more like CPS-my job is to teach not do payroll’s job for them!
They didn't send information letting us know what was going on. Nobody even apologized. Couldn't get through to payroll. Couldn't get through to central office administrators who were all out. Murphy or Goren would have come in to direct but, oh yeah, they live in Evanston and they cared about their employees.
However anyone felt about Goren or Murphy, they were professional and took pride in how they did their jobs.
The District statement says the software went out for other school districts. Can we find out if these other districts also had payroll problems?
Yes it is the board’s responsibility.
We should never hesitate to remind people that the superintendent runs the day to day operations for the district and is also ultimately responsible. This is the second superintendent in a row to come to Evanston with no experience as the top executive in a secretive process.
I wonder if they had applicants in the past pools with experience dealing with payroll, or school construction for that matter.
Is the board hiring the best candidates to run the district? Why do we have two people in a row without top managerial experience?
I've been trying to find other districts with problems but have come up empty .. but I don't know the name of the software vendor (still looking into this).
Regarding who does what - one thing I've been thinking about a lot is like - the board generally views their role as setting the budgets and hiring the superintendent. But like, I don't think that's working.
As StephR stated, they didn’t take out holding from paychecks (also during Horton’s tenure). There has been no CFO for almost a year and it seems that both Horton and Turner like to play the shell game of moving administrators from position to position which leads to a further lack of accountability. I worked for the district for 7 years and there were multiple times in the last two years I was there that I was not paid after submitting a time sheet-thankfully our school administrative assistant was in top of it for all of us! The school board and their lack of financial accountability and oversight is going to run this district into bankruptcy. https://evanstonroundtable.com/2022/02/03/district-65-mistakenly-failed-to-deduct-federal-taxes-from-employee-paychecks/#:~:text=From%20September%20through%20December%20of,District%2065%20Educators'%20Council%20President
I don't understand how the District is so bad at the most basic function - paying your employees on time and the right amount. It demonstrates an absolute lack of competency and if I was on the Board, I'd be losing my mind over this. The Citizens of Evanston give this District $150 million bucks and they can't even pay the staff properly. Insane.
I reached out to the company that runs the system for comment because I haven't been able to find another District with the same outage this week. More to come.
Not one member of the board has any financial background. All of them are in the education industry or are consultants for education, not a single board member has any other skill set. Angela Blaising would have been phenomenal on the board and would have held the administration to task as she was a CFO, but she was raked through the mud. I just can’t believe with 60%+ of our taxes going to the school districts there isn’t ANY oversight and more Evanstonians aren’t outraged.
This isn't even a financial thing, this is like someone should be reading the Superintendent the riot act at the Board Meeting. Missing payrolls is *serious fucking business* and every taxpayer, regardless of your politics should be completely outraged at this. Employees could miss rent payments, miss court payments, get late fees from banks, miss insurance payments, etc. The absolute bare minimum we should be doing is making sure our public servants get a check on time.
If I was on the Board, I would make the Superintendent testify to what happened here in public and get her gaurantee that the problem won't happen again and if it does, there have to be consequences! The Superintendent works for YOU not the other way around.
I was employed as a long-term substitute in the district between 2021-2023. My pay check had been late (or wrong) at least 4 times.
This is humiliatingly bad!
Payroll keeps screwing up. Incorrect deductions, wrong rates, no taxes taken out. When are they going to hold someone accountable? Who IS responsible?
Ultimately the Board is - they are the ones signing the checks
Is it odd that this is the end of their fiscal year? Could this be part of a way to show more money at the end of a school year?