St. Paul schools pay most employees who missed checks

Updated 4:53 p.m. | Posted 1:08 p.m.

St. Paul Public Schools has paid most of its employees who didn't receive scheduled direct deposits this week, the district announced Friday afternoon.

The district made about 95 percent of the 7,361 payments by wire transfer, according to an email sent to employees. It's working to contact about 95 employees whose payments remain outstanding.

District employees learned early Friday that their paychecks hadn't been directly deposited into their bank accounts as usual. The error only affected employees who used direct deposit, not those who collected paper checks.

The mistake occurred because a district payroll employee asked US Bank to delete what was thought to be an erroneous payroll information file, the district said Friday afternoon. The deleted file was actually correct, which meant the 7,361 direct deposits — totaling around $9 million — were never made. Only about 6,300 district employees are paid by direct deposit, but some of them split their payments among multiple accounts, according to St. Paul Public Schools.

The district will reimburse employees for any fees they might incur through the wire transfer process used to pay them Friday, it said, as well as any overdraft fees related to the incident.

The district apologized earlier in the day. "We're extremely disappointed and so sorry that this happened, obviously this is the worst time of the year for this to happen," said Julie Schultz Brown, a spokeswoman for the district.

The district sent out emails and robocalls on Friday to alert staff of the mistake.

The district is providing updates to the situation on the staff section of its website.

St. Paul Federation of Teachers President Denise Rodriguez said she's been fielding calls from concerned employees since early Friday morning.

Rodriguez said the district has had persistent problems with payroll, including two incidents this month where the union filed grievances.