For several hours Friday, thousands of St. Paul School District employees were in danger of having a very un-Happy New Year.
A glitch in the district's payroll system was to blame, and employees whose pay is deposited directly to their bank accounts were fuming, leading to dozens of nasty comments on the Facebook page of the local teachers union.
Instead of their expected pay Friday, employees with direct deposit got only this depressing reassurance from the school district early in the day: Their pay would be delayed, and district officials had no idea how long it would take to correct the problem.
By Friday afternoon, however, all was well, or at least, a whole lot better.
At 4 p.m., the district posted on its website that 95 percent of the 7,361 direct deposits planned for payroll had been deposited. By 5 p.m., all but 95 district employees had been paid.
The problem appears to have been traced to something called an electronic automatic clearinghouse (ACH) process. An error in that process led to the delay, officials said.
"SPPS today worked with US Bank to resolve this issue by sending money via wire transfers so that further delay was avoided," a district statement read. "We are grateful to US Bank for their speedy response to this issue. If you were one of the affected employees, please check your account to ensure your payment was received."
Officials asked employees to note if there were "wire transfer fees" or overdraft fees charged to their account as a result of the glitch. As of Friday afternoon, St. Paul public schools' payroll department was creating a way for employees to be reimbursed for those fees, officials said.
