Garbage in, Garbage out

From the Sun-Sentinel-

Palm Beach County teachers are facing two major uncertainties as school lets out Friday for the summer: A pay raise for next year and a possible skipped regular paycheck in August.

Negotiators ended talks Tuesday with the district and teachers union far apart on a deal for raises, and no follow-up bargaining sessions were immediately scheduled.

The Classroom Teachers Association presented a counter-offer of an 8 percent salary boost for the district's 12,400 teachers, which include about 8,000 union members. The union was seeking 11.1 percent in talks earlier this month, saying it refused to settle for the same 4 percent raise it got this year.

The school district proposes raises averaging 4.4 percent, up from an offer of 3.2 percent, depending upon experience and seniority factors. Officials say the district can't do much better because it received less new funding from the state for the coming school year.

"We're still in the same spot," union President Theo Harris said of the gap.

Officials on both sides are hopeful of reaching an amicable compromise on a technical payroll problem that would leave teachers without paychecks on Aug. 10, two weeks after their July 27 paychecks.

The district's nearly year-old PeopleSoft business operations computer system is designed to pay only employees who are actively in their assigned positions.

For the coming school year, teachers will still be on summer vacations on Aug. 10. The district can't run a normal payroll on that date, because teachers won't be working until Aug. 15. That's one week before the first day of school on Aug. 22.

In simple words, this is bullshit. The county can pay the teachers, if the people in payroll get off their fat asses and do their jobs. That includes the Superintendant of Schools Art Johnson and the Chief Finance Officer Joe Moore. The Peoplesoft payroll debacle has gone on long enough, its time for people to take responsibility and if not, resign and let someone who can do the job and is willing to do it, Do it! Excuses and more missing paychecks are not acceptable and shouldn't be to in anyone in Palm Beach County. The government of this county belongs to the residents here, not the elected morons and lazy incompetent bureaucrats who can't do even a simple job properly.

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