San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) has thrown away $16.5 million in taxpayer money to private corporations in exchange for a disaster. In 2019, district staff proposed contracting Infosys to create a payroll software—EmPower.  The original contract was for $9.5 million, but continual system testing failures and training gaps raised the contract price to $13.7 million by the end of 2021 (SF Examiner, 9/27/22).  

After $13.7 million spent and more than 2 years’ implementation time, SFUSD has completely botched the roll out of the Empower transition. The January 2022 launch and transition have been catastrophic. 

• Thousands of educators have had lost wages, cancelled benefits, errors in tax withholdings and retirement contributions
• Educators, support staff, and administrators are wasting countless hours filling out and reviewing timesheets, identifying errors, submitting Help Tickets, reaching out for support, and going to 555 Franklin for answers.
• We are 9 months into EmPower and the glitches continue.  Open Help Tickets are at 14,871 (8,539 are payroll related; 6,332 are not payroll related).  2,047 Help Tickets have been open for over 90 days.

Our Demands:

1. Cancel the EmPower contract
   Ensure that public money—meant for schools and students—is not wasted on private corporations, especially ones which can't even provide the services for which they were hired.
2. Hold SFUSD administrators accountable for EmPower crisis
   This disaster has led to massive disruption of educators' lives—this can only negatively impact our students.
3. Restore a fully-staffed district payroll and HR department
   Invest in stable schools and students instead of austerity measures which hurt schools, students, and educators. 

How do we accomplish this goal?

In recognition that sites are at different places with regards to self organizing, there is a menu of mobilizing options to choose from (differentiation!)
But ALL options include participating in a collective action at 555 Franklin on 11/2 @ 2:30PM.

• Work-to-Rule Day: All staff commit to working their contractual hours only on Nov. 2 and to not participate in any PD or staff meetings.
• PTO out: All staff commit to using one PTO day and not reporting for work.
• Walk out: All staff commit to arriving at work but leaving campus at a predesignated and agreed upon time.

Go to bit.ly/SFUSDitspersonal to download flyers and slides! Spread the word and let's CANCEL EMPOWER!