More HISD executive-level shenanigans. And they want us to approve a $1.3 billion bond in November? Don't know about y'all, but if I was an HISD employee, I'd be cleaning my shotgun right about now! http://blog.chron.com/k12zone/2012/09/3591/ HISD asks employees to refund pay Sep 05, 2012 3,700 Houston ISD administrators, clerks, secretaries and other employees are being asked to forfeit vacation days or return cash to the school district to correct a payroll problem that has lingered for 12 years. HISD’s chief financial officer, Melinda Garrett, said in an interview this week that the district had made the unusual decision in 2000, when it changed payroll systems, to automatically advance pay to newly hired employees. The employees then had to return the extra money, either with unused time off or with cash, when they left the district. Now, to the surprise of employees, HISD is asking them to repay their debts within the next two years, or sooner if possible. On Wednesday afternoon, officials were calculating the total amount owed to the district. The problems stem from the district’s change of payroll systems in 2000. To keep employees on the same payday schedule, district officials at the time decided to advance newly hired employees extra money instead of having them skip a paycheck, Garrett said. The president of the Houston Federation of Teachers union, Gayle Fallon, is questioning the legality of HISD’s move, as the employees did not make the payroll error and, in fact, some did not know about it until now. “Should the employee have known? Could they look at their check and tell? No,” Fallon said. “Most of the ones that have called us had no idea what this was about and why is this happening.” The employees affected are mostly higher-paid administrators and lower-paid office workers. Few teachers are affected because the payroll error only involved employees who work 12-month schedules. Employees were overpaid for between nine and 20 days, according to Garrett and HISD’s controller, Kenneth Huewitt. Most of the employees, nearly 75 percent, have enough unused vacation and leave days to return to the district to cover the overpayments. Employees who don’t have enough accrued days or who want to keep their days will have to repay the district in cash. Huewitt said the district decided to seek the money now in part because he recently heard concerns from longtime employees who were upset that when they retired, they had to forfeit unused time off back to the district. “It took a little while to come up with some options that were legal and that were employee friendly,” Huewitt said. Fallon, however, said her attorney is researching whether the district can demand repayment for years-old debts, especially when the employees were not given a choice about accepting the extra money upfront. The school board signed off on this repayment plan at a meeting last month without public discussion. Employees hired after July 2011 are not affected because the district stopped the practice of advancing pay, Garrett said.
i don't think this error should cause you not to vote for the bonds. its not like they stole the money or used it to cook the books.
What causes me not to vote for the bonds is seeing the waste I saw while working there for 4 1/2 years. I actually worked on the project referenced in the article. They were warned against making the decision to advance employees money, but they went ahead and did it anyway. Now the chickens are coming home to roost. Financial accountability at HISD will not take place until Garrett and Huewitt are replaced. They've been cooking the books there for years, trust me.
just curious, was the warning more of a technical warning like their reasoning was flawed, or was it a warning that it was just a stupid idea, or was it both? also, i'm not going to argue about hsid accountability with you, i'm sure you know more than me. however, i do know their schools are in bad shape, and if you are 100% right, then maybe they should clean house first but the schools need upgrading.
The first part of the house to be cleaned (while 'cleaning house') should always be the room that holds the administration.
Eh, it doesn't make them look that great as an employer, but I don't think it's something to be up in arms about either. It's just accounting in the end.
They overpay employees, admit it, and then seek an extra $1 billion? Were these people HISD graduates themselves? When I worked for a government institution you could have your pay advanced but you had to request for the advancement, it wasn't just autmatically done. Sounds like a sketchy system. Famous last words of Arthur Andersen?
Both. Many, if not most, companies make a new employee work through one pay period and then give the employee their first paycheck at the conclusion of the second pay period. HISD chose to do this pay advance so that new employees did not have to work through a pay period in order to receive their first check.
It is something to be up in arms about if you are an HISD employee and you were never told that you would have to pay money back upon resigning your position or being terminated. When I began working for them, I was not told, yet they did this to me (advance the pay to pay it back later). Fortunately, I worked on that project so I knew about it anyway, and I knew that when and if I ever resigned, the best time to do it was at the end of a fiscal year, in order to minimize the effect of the payback. When I resigned, I gave notice so that my last day of work was on the very last day of the fiscal year.
If HISD wants its fiscal house back in order, slash the top administrator's bloated pay by half for the next 10 years. That would be a nice start. It's high time that Texas consolidates all the school districts, thereby eliminating 75% of duplicate administrators. The money budgeted for schools could be divided by the total number of students and allocated on a pro rata basis in, say, 10 super grade school regions.