The Spark

the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist

“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx

Fix This “Glitch”:
Short Paychecks in L.A. Schools

Sep 24, 2007

The 78,000 teachers and staff who work for the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) have started the new school year where they left off–concerned that they won’t get paid. For the last seven months, 30,000 of them have gotten paychecks shorted by thousands, and sometimes even tens of thousands of dollars. Many have fallen so far behind on their bills that they had to take out special bank loans.

This debacle was brought to them by the LAUSD, which had hired Deloitte Consulting, a subsidiary of Deloitte Touche, one of the biggest accounting companies in the world, to install a new computerized accounting and payroll system. The system is named Business Tools for Schools, and Deloitte charged the school district 55 million dollars for it. But it didn’t deliver what was promised.

Did the LAUSD top administrators go after Deloitte and force them to pay for their debacle? No, the LAUSD rewarded Deloitte with another contract for 10 million dollars to supposedly fix their own mistakes.

Meanwhile, the LAUSD instructs teachers and staff to patiently wait another several months for payroll “glitches” to be fixed.

Teachers and staff could create a few “glitches” of their own!