Missing paychecks, incorrect payments and withholding errors have burdened some Baltimore County Public Schools educators in the last month.

The pay issues came after the school system switched to Oracle Cloud, a one-stop virtual shop for payroll, benefits, time off and other employee self-service actions. The program, which launched in June, is supposed to be a more efficient upgrade from the district’s previous system.

System officials said the payroll errors affected fewer than 2% of staff members, or about 400 employees, and that the issues have been resolved. Oracle isn’t to blame, they said — it was partly “human/programming” errors and bank issues. But some educators are still on edge.

The Teachers Association of Baltimore County — the county’s teachers union — is calling for a meeting with school system leadership and Oracle staff to discuss solutions.

At a school board meeting last week, Riderwood Elementary teacher J. Heather Buchman pushed through her nervousness to tell board members how she’s been impacted by the recent payroll errors.

Her pay has been inaccurate before, thanks to a 2020 ransomware attack, which auditors found Baltimore County was not fully prepared for. Still, Buchman continued to work long hours. She called on the board to fix the latest pay issues out of respect for what Baltimore County referred to as its greatest resource: teachers.

“I’m a person who relies on you to make sure that I am equitably treated in terms of my worth,” Buchman said.

Kelly Olds, head of the teachers union, read a letter from the union’s board of directors that same night. It called for more communication from school system leaders beyond posting in the district’s internal announcement hub and a sit-down meeting that includes representatives from Oracle.

“While the scope of these problems is not clear, we, as union leaders, recognize that there are few things more critical to morale and to the efficient operation of a school system than all of its employees knowing they can trust what is in their checks, and also knowing that if there is a problem, it will be fixed rapidly and thoroughly,” Olds read.

She said issues include access to pay slips, the design of the pay slip and the ability to remedy paychecks without further problems.

Mildred Charley-Greene, the school district’s chief of staff, was standing in for Superintendent Myriam Rogers that night. Educators deserve to have accurate pay, she said, and staff members have been working nonstop to fix the problems.

All verified errors have been corrected, spokesperson Gboyinde Onijala said this week.

On payday Sept. 19, M&T Bank experienced online and mobile banking issues that resulted in approximately 2,700 Baltimore County staff members who banked with M&T not receiving their direct deposits, Onijala said.

Neil Dhillon, a mid-Atlantic regional spokesperson for M&T Bank, said the interruption was resolved the same day and encouraged any customers impacted to contact the bank directly.

For the people who reported being underpaid, the district discovered that, in most cases, it was because they were calculating their pay with a formula under the old system. Onijala said the changes under Oracle were explained ahead of time via the school system’s website and through the unions’ pay scales. It also appeared, she said, that staff forgot about the benefit deductions kicking in Sept. 19.

“Employees are adjusting to the new system and payslip design and have had questions, and we have provided updates to address those questions as appropriate,” Onijala wrote in an email. “Data entry and coding errors have impacted a small number of staff, and those errors have been resolved quickly.”

The data and coding errors were a “human/programming” error, she wrote. The Oracle implementation overall, she said, is going smoothly, and Oracle was not responsible for the issues. Onijala noted that district leaders have regularly updated unions on Oracle implementation.

Oracle did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In an interview, Olds said she was told that teachers who are owed money “will be made whole by this Friday.” She’s still waiting on her requested meeting with school district leadership and Oracle staff but said she was told they’re working on scheduling it.

The board approved the switch to Oracle in July 2023. Its contract came with a $27 million spending authority for five years. Staff referred to it as a “business transformation project” during a May 2024 board meeting because it was a major upgrade from CGI, a system that “had many archaic and manual processes” that led to errors and fiscal challenges, Onijala said.

“In the former CGI system, we were running payroll every week and, because of the manual nature of the system, there were other errors that the new system is addressing,” she added.

Oracle implementation is ongoing. Its finance features, which will allow district officials to manage expenses, purchases, projects, grants and more, will go live in April.

Friday is the first payday since the school system said pay issues were fixed. That means bank accounts should put worried teachers at ease.

About the Education Hub

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