Lots of East Baton Rouge Parish schools employees awoke Tuesday morning, checked their bank accounts and found they hadn’t got paid like they thought they would.
Just before noon Tuesday, Nichola Hall, chief of human resources, sent out a memo to let affected employees know the problem had been fixed and they should be “paid via direct deposit by the end of the business day today.” Hall suggested they keep checking with their bank since financial institutions process direct deposits with varying speed.
The affected employees get paid for nine or 10 months of work, but elect to have their paychecks spread out over 12 months, a process known as “summer deferred pay.”
Letrece Griffin, chief of communications, said human error was to blame — the school system processed deferred payroll later than normal, prompting hours of delay.
“It was caught early enough so that payments happened on the 28th during the day, not first thing in the morning like we are used to being paid,” Griffin said.
Griffin warned that there is enough uncertainty about how quickly banks will process the payments that, while almost every employee should be paid by late Tuesday afternoon, there’s a chance a few employees may not see their pay until Wednesday morning.