Sent Nov. 7, 2022

Dear SFUSD staff,

I just finished my fourth month serving as your Superintendent. When I took the job, I knew that the district’s payroll system had been disrupting the lives of teachers and staff in significant ways. And after my first four months in SFUSD, it continues to be disruptive.

Since I started, I’ve spent a lot of time listening and learning from our community. EMPowerSF consistently came up when I visited schools, at town halls, when I met with our labor partners, and when I checked my emails. I have heard heartbreaking stories. This is beyond frustrating. This is beyond upsetting. This is completely unacceptable. We have a moral imperative to fix this. We have to do right by our employees to rebuild trust in the district. 

We cannot afford to wait any longer to do what it takes to fix this. So I am declaring a state of emergency to implement extraordinary corrective actions.

We have received the preliminary diagnosis of the problem from Alvarez and Marsal (A&M), the consultant we hired with a strong track record and expertise to address the payroll challenges at SFUSD. A&M discovered that the problems were bigger and more complex than we initially thought. Quoting A&M’s diagnosis, “The District’s problems are complex, cross functional and unstructured in cause, effect and solutioning.” And it was clear that our current course of action wasn’t going to be sufficient relative to the magnitude of the problems. 

Declaring a state of emergency means we will be doing things differently so that we can do right by our educators and staff. Beginning today, we are doing the following: 

• Creating a Command Center that will ultimately be staffed by approximately 60 people: a combination of reassigned SFUSD staff, additional A&M and Infosys staff, and additional contract payroll specialists
• I am appointing my new Head of Staff, Marin Trujillo, to lead the Command Center. Marin will act on my behalf and have full authority to do whatever it takes to fix our employees’ problems
• The Command Center will focus on clearing the backlog of issues and institute long term fixes to our payroll systems to prevent new issues for long-term resolution.
• We will be sharing updates and key indicators regularly with our staff, the Board, and the public. This looks like a corrective action dashboard where we provide an overview of our ticket backlogs and our progress to addressing this backlog. 
• In order for us to get our systems back to healthy standards, we will also be tracking how quickly we are resolving the issues with our payroll system to prevent future issues. 

I am accountable for this plan. I will hold Marin, SFUSD staff, and consultants responsible for implementing this plan. This is a complex situation and there are still a lot of open questions. We are committed to improved transparency by sharing our progress along the way. I will be in constant communication with our educators, staff, board, and the public with updates. 

If you are experiencing payroll issues, please report your issue via eis.sfusd.edu or contact the EMPowerSF Benefits, Leaves, and Payroll Call Center at 415-463-1550.

I want to thank all of you for continuing to show up for our students and families in spite of these issues. We deeply understand the challenges and disruptions these issues have caused our community. We are completely focused on ensuring these challenges can be overcome. You have my assurance, and the assurance of SFUSD, that these problems will be rectified.

In community,

Dr. Matt Wayne
SFUSD Superintendent