Oakland Unified School District reverses 2,800 employees payroll direct deposits

OAKLAND, Calif. (KGO) -- Oakland Unified School District says an employee's human error resulted in 2,800 employees' payroll direct deposits being reversed.

The deposits went in last week and were reversed sometime between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.

"People started telling us, hey where'd my money go," said OUSD Spokesperson John Sasaki.

"People are down, it's a hard time of year, it's a hard job and we all love it and we come here every day with a really good attitude and working really hard and it's just frustrating," said Piedmont Avenue Elementary School Technology Teacher Lisa Newby.

Sasaki said the district initially believed Union Bank which processes OUSD's payroll made the error. He has since retracted that statement.

"It was not their fault, we thought it was we apologize to them for assuming at the beginning that it was, it was actually an employee here at OUSD who made a mistake it was human error," said Sasaki.

Sasaki says there is no reason to believe it was an intentional act.

Newby says her family is especially impacted. Her husband is an OUSD Project Manager whose direct deposit was also reversed.

"Both of us had negative accounts this morning," said Newby.

Newby says she's been incurring overdraft fees all day.

"I know that human errors happen, we all do them it's just a big, big, big one so it's hard to just brush it off lightly," said Newby.

The district says it will do everything it can to make everybody whole again.

"We'll be talking to everyone's individual bank," said Sasaki.

"I really looking forward to seeing my bank account go the other direction quickly," said Newby.

Sasaki says some employees have already seen their money returned.

"We apologize to anybody that was adversely affected by this," said Sasaki.

He also assures employees that the mistake has nothing to do with the ongoing city workers' strike or OUSD's budget issues.