Announcement Details
Announcement Message
Sent Nov. 2, 2022
Dear SFUSD community,
I deeply understand the magnitude of how EMPowerSF has been disruptive to our educators, and perhaps even your student’s educational experience. It is unacceptable that many of our employees continue to experience issues with the pay they deserve for their hard work and service.
Fixing EMPowerSF has been a priority for me since I started as superintendent of SFUSD in July. I have been receiving daily updates from the EMPowerSF team and working closely with staff to urgently address this issue. I have taken swift action to remedy harm and work towards long-term solutions:
- We issued off-cycle checks to make sure that staff who reported non-payments were compensated.
- We instituted an intervention by bringing on Alvarez & Marsal (A&M) to provide expertise and people power to assess structural and emergent issues to identify long-term solutions.
- I have mobilized central office staff to be reassigned to work on EMPowerSF to improve response rates and provide case management.
- SFUSD launched a call center last week for any affected employees to report any new payroll-related issues, or to receive updates on previously-reported issues. Staff can also continue to submit a ticket through our online system to report issues they are experiencing.
- We are launching a public-facing EMPowerSF website as a way to provide transparency and share updates with the public as soon as they become available.
SFUSD has a responsibility to solve this issue so that we can rebuild trust with our community. I know that there is a lot of work ahead, and we will not stop until we can make every SFUSD employee whole. This is paramount so that our educators can focus on our students, and on the work to provide each and every student with an excellent educational experience.
Sincerely,
Dr. Matt Wayne
SFUSD Superintendent