Payroll errors persist at the Rochester City School District some six months after they were first detected.
District leaders are taking steps to find an alternative payroll software system, Superintendent Eric Rosser said.
“We recognize that it is impossible for any organization to identify a new platform and implement that platform tomorrow,” Rosser said during a recent school board meeting.
“We've come up with a strategy that will allow us to engage in working with a particular company," he added. “We're going to be requesting that they do a feasibility study, and that feasibility study will serve as the ground, or the foundation, by which transitioning to a new system will be a better reality for the Rochester City School District."
Meanwhile, Central Office has hundreds of complaints from staff that are still marked as open, according to district officials.
“This is taking 20 people. We're working around the clock to do this,” Chief Financial Officer Robert McDow said at the school board meeting. “Before I came up here today at six o'clock, they were in another payroll meeting, and that's continued since the middle of October.”
The district reports nearly 600 unique complaints that were unresolved as of Dec.18. That includes 81 people to date who submitted a complaint stating they have not been paid at all in at least one payroll cycle. About 20 of them date back to mid July.
The errors were first identified in July when the district transitioned to a new human resources platform called Oracle Fusion. Superintendent Rosser said in August that part of the challenge was a software defect.
Oracle did not respond to requests for comment.
“When will it end?” said María González, a school psychologist at the Monroe campus. “Clearly, they do not have the amount of people that is needed to correct this issue at this point. It feels like they’re playing ‘Whack-a-Mole' because they fix one problem, and then another one shows up.”
The financial hardship and emotional toll is significant, she said.
“Every Wednesday morning, when I wake up, I go to check my pay slip, because we can view it for the payment on that Friday,” González said. “And I find myself shaking some mornings because if that money doesn't show up in my account on Friday, my account will be overdrawn.”
Gonzalez and Urbanski expressed concern that retirement funds were being deducted from paychecks but not received in the statewide system. A spokesperson with the New York State Teachers' Retirement System (NYSTRS) said that is not the case.
"NYSTRS continues to work with the Rochester City School District to resolve data reporting issues," Assistant Director of Communications and Outreach Tim Mack said. "Member contributions to the Retirement System for the 2025-26 school year will be collected from the district in the fall of 2026, so no contribution payments to NYSTRS have been missed."
