{"id":729475,"date":"2026-04-15T10:28:23","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T10:28:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/729475\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T10:28:23","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T10:28:23","slug":"sfusd-retirement-funds-likely-missing-hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/729475\/","title":{"rendered":"SFUSD Retirement Funds Likely Missing Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kelsey Barnes and her husband admit they\u2019re unusual. Since they first started dating, they\u2019ve had a monthly meeting to go over their budget. \u201cWe go through our contributions to our little retirement accounts and measure our progress,\u201d says Barnes. \u201cWe\u2019re very nerdy people.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Barnes works for the San Francisco Unified School District as a community schools coordinator<\/a> \u2014 a type of school-site advocate \u2014 and because of their nerdy habit, she and her husband spotted a big problem. Last August, Barnes\u2019 pension account stopped accruing funds, even though she\u2019d been contributing with every paycheck. The account is now missing more than $6,000.<\/p>\n

Barnes soon told colleagues and one, Jessica Agnos, took on the mantle of union sleuth, pestering the pension fund and helping others scrutinize their accounts. Dozens of district employees have since found the same problem. If their union\u2019s estimate is correct, it could end up affecting hundreds of workers and totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars if not more.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These employees are clerks, custodians, maintenance staff, cafeteria workers, and school coordinators like Agnos and Barnes. Some are among the lowest-paid workers in the district, and many speak English as a second language. Only a few dozen have even figured out how to check for the missing funds. The problem isn\u2019t easy to spot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It all began last July, when SFUSD, after three years trying to make a disastrous payroll system work, finally switched to a new one. Leaders promised comprehensive fixes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Other flaws, such as incorrect or missing teachers\u2019 pay, seem to have mostly abated with the new system. But now pension payments aren\u2019t flowing into retirement accounts for members of the district\u2019s Service Employees International Union (SEIU) chapter. SFUSD automatically deducts the funds from their paychecks. <\/p>\n

A few dozen employees have documented the glitch, but SEIU chapter president Antona\u00e9 Robertson suspects that all of her members \u2014 nearly 1,000 \u2014 are affected.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Adding to general frustration about SFUSD\u2019s communication skills, Robertson and others say the district didn\u2019t alert anyone, at least not until union members started asking questions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Kelsey Barnes happened to spot more than $6,000 missing from her pension account during a monthly budget meeting with her husband. (Courtesy Kelsey Barnes)<\/p>\n

The district\u2019s first notice to all SEIU members who might be affected came on April 6, and it wasn\u2019t even a direct message. District staff had explained the problem to the school board, and board president Phil Kim forwarded the explanation to Robertson via email.<\/p>\n

The explanation Kim forwarded said the problem should be fixed by June, and that the money has been diverted into a different fund but is intact. Two days later, on Apr. 8, the administration sent its first direct notice to employees.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AThough SFUSD documented problems as early as June 2025, the district did directly contact affected union members until this month. (The Frisc)<\/p>\n

Neither SFUSD nor the pension fund has answered The Frisc<\/strong>\u2019s questions about the number of employees affected or the total dollars that the problem has diverted. District spokespeople referred The Frisc<\/strong> to their Apr. 8 letter to employees.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kim says that he has brought up the problem \u201cmultiple times\u201d to Superintendent Maria Su \u201cand requested that they work meaningfully in partnership with SEIU to [reach a] solution as soon as possible.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, those employees are still missing the money from their pension accounts, with no record of it accruing elsewhere. They just have to take the district\u2019s word for it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018It still looked normal\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Barnes first noticed the missing funds, she assumed it was a temporary glitch. \u201cI had a lot of faith that it would get resolved,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She filed a help ticket in September and got what she calls a \u201ccookie cutter\u201d response. In January, she mentioned it at a union meeting. \u201cWe had everybody log in and started realizing it was more people than just me,\u201d says Barnes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To catch the problem, employees have to hunt through convoluted financial documents. Agnos, community school coordinator at Starr King Elementary, discovered she\u2019s missing roughly $9,000. Another coordinator, Michelle Jacques, is missing about $7,500. \u201cEven if I had glanced at my pay stub, which I did from time to time, it still looked normal because the money was still coming out of our checks,\u201d says Jacques, who works at Grattan Elementary.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"UserKelsey Barnes\u2019 first clue that something was amiss in her pension account was the error in her years served. Money is still being taken out of employees\u2019 paychecks, making the problem difficult to spot. (Courtesy of Kelsey Barnes; The Frisc)<\/p>\n

Doing the math requires logging into the San Francisco Employee Retirement System (SFERS<\/a>), the city-run pension program, and meticulously double-checking records. The big tip-off for Barnes was a much lower amount of service time than she\u2019d actually accrued. Digging further, the system showed that money deducted from paychecks stopped showing up in their pensions in July 2025.<\/p>\n

The community school coordinators, who have a shared WhatsApp group, soon found the problem among other employees. \u201cI\u2019m a senior clerk typist,\u201d says union president Robertson. \u201cNone of us work at the same site, none of us work for the same department.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Chapter president Antona\u00e9 Robertson suspects all of her nearly 1,000 SEIU members are missing pension deposits, but the union hasn\u2019t done a comprehensive survey yet. (Courtesy Antona\u00e9 Robertson)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been hard to get a handle on the problem\u2019s scope. For many SEIU workers, English is a second language. Barnes, one of several SEIU members at Spring Valley Science Elementary School, says \u201cone of our members had to have her daughter help fill out the service tickets because it\u2019s hard for her to translate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Agnos, who keeps a detailed spreadsheet, has gotten 37 union members to check their accounts. Several of them allowed The Frisc<\/strong> to review their accounts to verify discrepancies. The totals vary, but all are missing thousands of dollars.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As they wait for a fix, some members want to turn off the payroll deductions. \u201cI would be happy to withhold that money,\u201d says Ashley Ornelas, community schools coordinator at San Francisco International High, \u201cbut it\u2019s a mandatory contribution.\u201d Ornelas says she\u2019s missing at least $6,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ironing out kinks<\/strong><\/p>\n

The district\u2019s accounting system has bedeviled employees for years. Problems started when SFUSD upgraded in Jan. 2022 to a bespoke system, EMPower<\/a>, instead of one that a majority of California districts use. At EMPower\u2019s worst, hundreds of educators<\/a> received inaccurate pay, some missing entire checks, leading then-Superintendent Matt Wayne to declare a state of emergency<\/a> in Nov. 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After spending millions of futile dollars to fix EMPower, the board finally voted to scrap it in 2024<\/a> and turned to the well-known system Frontline. It connects directly to SFERS, which manages retirement accounts for the nearly 1,000 members of SEIU\u2019s district chapter. (The teachers union, United Educators of San Francisco, has a different arrangement. The state<\/a> manages pensions for its some 6,000 members.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Jessica Agnos, speaking here at a March Board of Education meeting, keeps a spreadsheet of SEIU members who have reported missing pension payments. (Photo: Taylor Barton)<\/p>\n

SFUSD spent $20 million upfront<\/a> on Frontline, according to the Chronicle. When the system went fully online nine months ago, the district acknowledged it had to iron out some kinks. Superintendent Su and staff gave almost daily updates<\/a> after the switch but stopped in September.<\/p>\n

At that point, the district knew something was amiss with the SEIU pensions. \u201cEMPower was already a disaster on the back end. And then you\u2019re trying to do a transfer of information,\u201d says Agnos. \u201cHow are you going to pull this off? Turns out they didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

A mysterious trust fund<\/strong><\/p>\n

One month before Frontline went live last summer, SFUSD and SFERS signed an agreement<\/a> acknowledging that SFUSD was \u201cfacing challenges\u201d submitting data to SFERS. It spelled out SFUSD\u2019s responsibilities in sending data to SFERS in the proper format, among other things.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In August, a month after Frontline came online, district staff presented a progress report<\/a> to the school board. \u201cWe continue to work on the SFERS and Frontline interface,\u201d Marin Trujillo, SFUSD\u2019s head of staff, told the board<\/a>. \u201cThese [connections] are critical. We never thought we were going to get them ready for the go-live. We almost did. We\u2019re not there yet. We\u2019re actively working on them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"SFUSD\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

In February, Agnos heard from SFERS that her missing money was going into something called the \u201cSFERS Trust Fund,\u201d and that she should direct further questions to the district.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When The Frisc<\/strong> began asking SFUSD about the problem in early April, spokespeople declined to comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then school board president Kim emailed SEIU on Apr. 6, forwarding the explanation that district staff had sent to the board. They said they learned about the \u201cdata integration issue\u201d in January, following the departure of then-head of payroll La\u2019Trice Harris-Hill.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"SideMixed messages: In August 2025 SFUSD head of staff Marin Trujillo (left) said at a school board meeting the district was working on the pension problem. But the district later said \u201cthe issue came up\u201d after payroll director La\u2019Trice Harris-Hill (right) departed in January 2026. (Courtesy SFUSD)<\/p>\n

\u201cEvidently, the program that communicated between SFUSD and SFERS broke down during Frontline implementation last year and had not been replaced or repaired but completed manually with a work-around,\u201d according to the language Kim shared with SEIU. \u201cThere had been no plan put in place to repair or replace the system.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Reached via LinkedIn, Harris-Hill told The Frisc <\/strong>said that she \u201cdid not return after winter break for a number of issues.\u201d She added that there were problems \u201clong before her arrival,\u201d but refused to give further comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The district then sent an email<\/a> on Apr. 8 to employees who use SFERS, its first direct communication since the problem began. The email said the issue had \u201clargely been resolved\u201d and \u201cemployee contributions are in the process of being reviewed and processed.\u201d <\/p>\n

The email said both employee and employer contributions \u2014 SFUSD matches the amounts \u2014 are in the SFERS Trust Fund, the same explanation Agnos had\u00a0heard in February.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"SFUSD\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

SEIU members say they know nothing about this trust fund. They have no way to view it. They don\u2019t know if SFUSD\u2019s matching dollars are actually going through, or if they are earning the correct amount of interest.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last week\u2019s SFUSD email encouraged those having problems to submit help tickets through the online portal<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018Disingenuous\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

An unnamed SFERS spokesperson, responding via email to The Frisc<\/strong>\u2019s queries, said that the district and city are working together to resolve technical issues. \u201cSFUSD members will receive the benefits they are due,\u201d the spokesperson wrote.<\/p>\n

But employees say it\u2019s hard to have faith when they weren\u2019t warned about the problem in the first place. It\u2019s the latest grievance around transparency between the district and its workforce. \u201cIt was disingenuous on their behalf not to tell us, considering we meet with them about payroll issues every month,\u201d says Robertson.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She worries her SEIU chapter received the silent treatment because it\u2019s less powerful than the teachers union, the United Educators of San Francisco. But UESF has also dropped hints about problems. President Cassondra Curiel spoke at a Mar. 10 board meeting about pension \u201cdiscrepancies,\u201d and Agnos says she\u2019s heard from multiple teachers about gaps in their pension dollars. UESF officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While the pension dollars are only a small fraction of each employee\u2019s salary, the missing money is especially important to workers who have recently retired, are thinking about retirement, or are perhaps afraid to, given the uncertainty.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Agnos knows at least one cafeteria worker who\u2019s been with the district 35 years is waiting for a resolution before retiring. Opening her laptop at a local cafe recently, she pointed to her growing spreadsheet of colleagues who are missing funds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now that the union has signed its new contract<\/a> \u2014 talks went on longer than the teachers\u2019 union, and finally resolved in late March \u2014 Agnos hopes more members have time to check their accounts, and that more local politicians take notice: \u201cWe\u2019re waiting to hear back about what can be done, and we\u2019re trying to alert everyone.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tMore from The Frisc…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kelsey Barnes and her husband admit they\u2019re unusual. Since they first started dating, they\u2019ve had a monthly meeting…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":729476,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[15],"tags":[38175,64,116921,147652,301890,301891,301892,17000,5678,255,301893,40852,700,2750,106234,301894,249736,301895,301896,15742,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-729475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-board-of-education","tag-business","tag-empower","tag-frontline","tag-grattan-elementary-school","tag-maria-su","tag-matt-wayne","tag-payroll","tag-pension","tag-personal-finance","tag-phil-kim","tag-public-schools","tag-retirement","tag-san-francisco","tag-seiu","tag-sfers","tag-sfusd","tag-spring-valley-science-elementary-school","tag-uesf","tag-union","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116408255203451881","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=729475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/729476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}