The North Carolina Association of Educators and the Gaston County school system have settled a lawsuit over persistent payroll problems that began in January 2022.
The state teachers’ group and two local teachers sued the district in March, saying Gaston County Schools employees were still getting incorrect paychecks and delayed retirement deposits after more than a year. This week NCAE announced that it has dropped the suit after the district agreed to pay $20,000 in legal fees.
Alexa Gram Feller, a fifth-grade teacher who’s president of the local NCAE branch, says problems are less frequent now, but employees are still wary.
“I’m going to continue to look at my paycheck every month. I’m still a little bit hesitant to just let it go and be like, ‘OK, I’m getting paid correctly,’” she said.
The problems arose when Gaston County piloted an Oracle Cloud payroll system approved by the state Department of Public Instruction. Some teachers were underpaid or missed checks altogether, while others were overpaid and had to figure out how to return the money. Payments into the state’s retirement system were delayed, and the snarls lingered long enough to create problems with W2 income-tax statements.
The district said this week that no single entity was responsible for the problems, and that the vendors and DPI staff worked with the district and its teachers to create a better system for identifying and resolving problems.
“I’m really glad that our voices have finally been heard,” Feller said. “And it’s really unreal that we had to do this just for us to get our pay correct.”
The settlement calls for both parties to continue meeting regularly at least through May 2024 to resolve any lingering problems.
“The Board and NCAE agreed that school district administrators and representatives from the NCAE will continue to work together, as they have in the past, on personnel and other school-related matters,” Gaston Schools Chief Communications Officer Todd Hagans said.