Dear SFUSD Staff,

I hope you had a restful fall break. Each week I make a point to visit our schools and I am always so impressed and appreciative of your dedication and hard work. You are the greatest asset in our District to ensure that we are providing the best educational outcomes for SFUSD students. SFUSD remains committed to investing in our staff, and I am excited about the tentative agreements that we have reached with our labor partners. I am writing to provide an update on our labor agreements and EMPowerSF below.

Approval of Labor Agreements & Budget Plans

I know our staff is eager for the district to implement the agreements. The next steps are as follows:

• Since our labor partners have ratified the agreements, the District needs to bring it forward to the Board of Education (BOE) for approval. 

• When an agreement is brought forward, the BOE also needs to approve an AB 1200 plan to submit to the California Department of Education. This plan is required by the state to ensure that districts are able to meet their financial obligations and remain fiscally solvent when implementing a new labor agreement. 

• Since the District committed significant financial resources to our two labor agreements, we need time to prepare the AB 1200 plan to accurately reflect how the salary increases impact our budget. 

• We will bring forward the tentative agreements and the AB 1200 plan to the SF Board of Education Regular Meeting on December 12, 2023, for approval.

Additionally, we are also working on the timeline for implementing salary increases per our labor agreements. We have learned many valuable lessons to minimize errors with EMPowerSF and know that changes to the system (i.e. a salary increase) tend to generate errors. Therefore, we are prioritizing accuracy as we consider how to provide the increases. We also recognize there may be questions about the tax implications of the increase. We are doing our due diligence so that the process goes smoothly, and will remain transparent about our progress. For now, we do not have a firm date for when you might expect to receive your increase. We hope to provide an update on the timeline following the December 12, 2023 Board meeting. 

EMPowerSF 

As we embark on the one-year anniversary of the SFUSD Payroll State of Emergency,  I want to take this opportunity to thank the staff who have been working diligently in the unrelenting effort to help remediate the system, increase transparency, and reduce the number of overall tickets. Over the last year, we were able to: 

• Reduce over 9,000 tickets since the height of the emergency. 

• Resolve system issues around union dues and 403(b), as well as implemented exception-based pay. 

• Maintain a public dashboard that has been updated weekly and provided regular public briefings and staff communications. 

I recognize that while we have made significant progress in our ability to address payroll issues, many of our employees are still experiencing issues with EMPowerSF. This is unacceptable, and my commitment to ensuring that every employee is paid on time and correctly is unwavering. I am working closely with our colleagues in business services, human resources, and technology to pave a hopeful path ahead.  We are exercising due diligence and engaging in a discovery phase to get an error-free Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) that can be successfully implemented and sustained. In the months forward, we will be: 

• Standardizing business and human resource process

• Improving overall operational efficiency 

• Aligning systems capabilities with new system adoption by increasing staff and user capacity through training, and by attracting and hiring talent with skills aligned with functional needs.

Once again, thank you for all you do for our students. 

Sincerely,

Dr. Matt Wayne

Superintendent