Los Gatos Union School District employees can stop taking a closer look at their paychecks now that a top official has resigned over payroll errors.
The errors were discovered Oct. 3, and Chief Business Official Tom Gray’s resignation was accepted on Oct.16.
“Basically, the district overpaid some employees’ benefits,” Los Gatos Elementary Teachers’ Association President Dianna Hill said. “What I can tell you is adjustments were made to employees’ paychecks without their knowledge.”
The controversy came to light when a teacher called the district asking why their paycheck was suddenly smaller, Hill explained.
She said they discovered that the district’s business office became aware more than a year ago that it had overpaid some teachers, principals, administrators and classified employees’ benefits. The office led by Gray, in an attempt to fix the situation, started returning the overpaid funds to district coffers sometime in September by taking small amounts out of the impacted employees’ paychecks, Hill explained.
That’s when the teacher noticed.
“The (initial) error resulted in overpayments in excess of $10,000 for each of the 10 teachers I met with,” Hill said. “I don’t know the total amount.”
She said 36 teachers were initially overpaid and the total number of district employees impacted was about 67.
District Superintendent Diana Abbati issued a statement about the overpayments, but she did not answer the question “How much money was involved?”
Here is Abbati’s statement in its entirety:
“On Oct.3, 2017, the superintendent and Human Resource Department became aware of a payroll error in the business department, and notified the Board of Trustees. Since then the board, superintendent and district staff, in collaboration with the Los Gatos Elementary Teachers’ Association and Los Gatos Union Classified Employees’ Association, have acted diligently to correct the error, ensure proper allocation, and notify all affected employees. The district is pleased to report that the matter has been resolved to ensure all affected employees would not be financially impacted by this error. On Oct. 16, 2017, the Board of Trustees accepted the resignation of Chief Business Official Tom Gray.”
Gray’s resignation was publicly announced following the school board’s Oct. 16 closed session. There was no mention of the overpayments.
But Hill said, “The board voted not to seek repayment,” meaning employees won’t have to pay back any more to make up for the initial error.
She went on to say, “I appreciate that the board and district have done right by the employees and resolved this issue quickly. An error was made, and we worked collaboratively to fix it.”
Moving forward, the school board has agreed to spend up to $50,000 to have Sacramento’s Ryland School Business Consulting review its business and financial operations to ensure best practices are being followed.
