Overtime Jumps as L.A. Schools Try to Save

By AMY PYLE

Jan. 5, 1997 12 AM PT

Share via
- Email
- Facebook
- X
- LinkedIn
- Threads
- Reddit
- WhatsApp

TIMES EDUCATION WRITER

In 1993, a management audit of the Los Angeles Unified School District suggested that broad savings could be realized by paring back bureaucracy and interweaving computer systems.

But making those very changes, a process that began even before the audit, sent district costs soaring in one area--overtime.

An analysis of district records by The Times shows that over the last five years, overtime pay has increased more than 500% in three divisions at the heart of the district’s computerization: budgeting, accounting and, most of all, technology.

By contrast, overtime in the rest of the district rose 25% during that same period.

The audit by Chicago-based Arthur Andersen & Co. had predicted that the changes would initially mean some increased costs, but did not specify overtime. An Anderson progress report released this fall said significant savings had begun in some other areas, such as bus maintenance and energy bills, but criticized the computer operation--formally known as the Information and Technology Division--for trailing expectations.

Supt. Sid Thompson said he was unaware of the scope of the overtime increase and vowed to call for a formal evaluation, with an eye toward hiring more employees to do some of the extra work.

“When you see [overtime] increasing five times, one has to ask the question: Is this the best way to do business?” Thompson said. “I don’t think it is.”

Later this month, however, the school board is scheduled to be asked to formalize the rapid escalation by setting aside $2 million in advance for overtime work by up to 860 eligible employees in the three divisions, a proposal that has largely escaped notice during months of school board budget debates.

That expenditure would be barely a blip in a nearly $5-billion budget, but compensation experts say it raises intriguing questions about management of the nation’s second-largest school system: Why can’t jobs be done during the normal workday? Why not hire additional people, at least temporarily? And, more immediate, does earmarking money for overtime remove incentives for economizing?

With overtime budgeted in advance “you don’t look at your problems,” said Gilbert Siegel, professor emeritus of public productivity at USC. “If they have a data processing surge and they know it’s going to come along, somebody ought to be thinking about that. But the tendency is not to, just put it in the budget and everyone plans on it.”

There are practical concerns too, such as the long-term impact of overtime on the employees who work the extra hours. Union leaders who represent the overtime-eligible workers worry that the constant long hours guarantee early burnout, more illness and, ultimately, expensive workers’ compensation claims.

“This is forced opportunity,” said Connie Moreno, who heads the 4,600-member chapter of the California School Employees Assn. “Your overtime money goes to the IRS and you end up destroying your family [because] you’re just never at home.”

Moreno said she has noticed an increasing number of employees with injuries related to computer keyboard use, such as tendinitis and carpal tunnel syndrome, a painful injury caused by repetitive motion.

District data indicates that the hundreds of employees in question--such as payroll clerks, data processors and secretaries--average 111 overtime hours annually, earning them about $3,000 extra.

But that average is inflated by many extreme cases, topped by a telecommunications aide who oversees the district’s switchboard operation and who logged 1,136 hours in overtime last year. That extra work averaged out to almost five hours daily and nearly doubled her salary, to $57,921. A telephone operator who works for her came in a close second in the overtime hours ranking, putting in 1,056 hours.

Some employees say the prospect of time-and-a-half pay encourages colleagues to create overtime. One computer division employee alleged that some workers stay late to repair portable radios, at a cost of at least $40 a unit, when the radios could be replaced for half that amount.

Troubled to learn of the high overtime chalked up by some, Thompson said he would ask that they be the first ones reviewed.

“I have to make the assumption they’re really working those hours, and it’s just not good for them,” he said.

The school district’s overtime dilemma is not unique. Other public agencies regularly weigh whether to hire new people--who must be paid a salary and benefits--or work current employees more.

Controversy arose last spring about record overtime in Los Angeles city and county fire departments, where at least 400 employees pocketed $40,000 or more in overtime. Nevertheless, the firefighters union released figures showing that overtime was cheaper than hiring full-time workers. One position filled with overtime hours cost $71,000 a year, about $8,000 less than hiring a new person.

School officials characterize their proposal to institutionalize overtime as a conservative budgeting move recognizing the extra work hours generated by last-minute requests for reports, unpredictable demands for complex data and glitches in the district’s system designed to link various computer networks.

When the state launched a class-size reduction effort last summer, the new class-by-class data breakdowns that were required monthly by the state sent programmers scurrying to reprogram the district’s computer systems, said chief financial officer Henry Jones.

Such demands translate into late night and weekend hours for employees at time-and-a-half pay--adding up to nearly 100,000 overtime hours last year in the three divisions, at an average of $26.50 an hour.

“At first we thought maybe we would implement the [new computer systems] and then the overtime would just go away,” Jones said. “Now that we’ve had a couple years, we think we need to reevaluate, add some positions, but also that there will be just the continued need for additional overtime.”

Jones noted that the steepest rise in overtime costs occurred in the 1993-94 school year--hitting $2.6 million for the three divisions, contrasted with $728,000 the year before. That coincides with the district’s initial attempts to overhaul administrative functions.

Last year, those costs dropped slightly--to $2.5 million--a dip Jones characterized as the beginning of a gradual downward trend, which he nonetheless cautioned may never reach the levels of five years ago.

But those who have studied overtime use in public agencies say ensuring that that trend continues will take concerted effort. If reduction is the goal, they say, setting aside overtime money in advance sends the wrong message to managers and employees.

“It’s quite easy to ask someone to work one hour extra a day; most people will accept that and they’ll like it,” said Thomas H. Patten, a management professor at Cal Poly Pomona. “But [if you] continue it long enough, they get used to it. If you take it away, people complain that . . . their salaries are being cut.”

The simplest alternative to overtime is hiring more people, at least temporarily. But the district’s central office has been loathe to hire in an era when it is under pressure to divest power to the schools.

In addition, the seasonal nature of much of the work may render hiring full-time workers uneconomical, Jones said, and making temporary hires would require extensive training and is resisted by the unions.

Another option is creating flexible teams, a strategy championed by the Japanese, in which employees with similar jobs are cross-trained to work in different divisions.

Siegel, the USC professor emeritus, said all kinds of bureaucracies “develop the hierarchy of little boxes, self-contained units, even though there’s a lot of work flow between these units. The modern philosophy is to think about the total process, from initial input to final output . . . [and] use some kind of team approach.”

It was an approach recommended in the Anderson report, which advocated increased sharing of secretaries and cross-training of clerical workers. Some of that has occurred, but the recent progress report on the Anderson recommendations concludes that more improvement is needed.

Jones, however, said cross-training has its limitations, including a likely increase in error rates because people are working in less familiar jobs.

A common problem with relying on overtime as a solution to uneven workloads is that not everyone is eligible to receive it.

In the Los Angeles district, teachers and principals cannot charge for extra hours, and claiming overtime reportedly is frowned upon even for eligible staff members based at school sites.

At district headquarters, overtime is common among those eligible--rank and file employees and their immediate supervisors.

This spotty access to overtime prompts charges of favoritism and allegations that employees are charging for more time than they actually work--”It’s not what you do, it’s who you know,” one employee in the computer division said.

The Anderson report called for investing $23 million in the core administrative computer system, known as the Integrated Financial System, which is intended to streamline operations. The district has spent that--and more--but the fall Anderson review questions whether the computer division is capable of completing the task.

In fact, since 1991, at least $50 million has flowed into the system, yet a technology audit released last year indicated that much work was still being done by hand by employees who did not have access to the system or had never been trained to use it. At the time, Thompson blamed some of the delays on his decision to change computer upgrading priorities--from focusing on the administrative system to linking hundreds of schools with the headquarters.

The lapses have bumped up overtime costs in budgeting and accounting, Jones said, because employees in those divisions have had to work with two parallel systems--the old and the new.

Those at the receiving end of the computer modifications also tell of drawbacks. Judy Halloran, a senior office assistant in the counseling office at Sepulveda Middle School, described an office with three separate computer systems, only two of which are linked. And though downtown administrators can look at the school’s records, she said, school personnel cannot yet tap into districtwide information.

Halloran speculated that she has contributed to the overtime costs even though she rarely charges for extra hours: Problems with the newest system, installed over the summer, prompted her office to dial the district technology “help line” at least five times a day for the first few months.

“You must realize that, as we’re going into the 21st century,” Halloran said, “L.A. Unified is just going into the 20th century.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

5 Years of Overtime

Three divisions of the Los Angeles Unified School District bureaucracy have asked for $2 million in advance-overtime payments this year because their use of overtime has become so common. The three have dramatically increased their overtime pay in the past five years. It was in the 1993-94 school year that the district stepped up its implementation of an interlinked computer system, which is intended to save money.

Budget Division

‘91-92: $59,501

‘92-93: $70,061

‘93-94: $168,910

‘94-95: $168,525

‘95-96: $129,105

5-year rise: 118%

Information and Technology Division (Computers)

‘91-92: $143,936

‘92-93: $297,846

‘93-94: $771,417

‘94-95: $1,637,939

‘95-96: $1,423,715

5-year rise: 889%

Accounting Division

‘91-92: $196,503

‘92-93: $360,106

‘93-94: $1,695,595

‘94-95: $1,216,491

‘95-96: $5,261

5-year rise: 401%

Totals

‘91-92: $399,940

‘92-93: $728,013

‘93-94: $2,635,922

‘94-95: $3,022,955

‘95-96: $2,538,081

5-year rise: 535%

Top 10 Overtime Users

The amount of overtime paid averages out annually to about $3,000 per employee. In practice, however, a handful of employees gain huge salary boosts by working overtime, while others log next to none. Here are the employees, listed by their jobs, who chalked up the most overtime in 1995-96:

Job Title: Telecommunications aide

Salary: $31,824

Overtime Hours: 1,136

Overtime Pay: $26,097

% of Salary: 82%

Job Title: Telephone operator

Salary: $20,679

Overtime Hours: 1,056

Overtime Pay: $15,764

% of Salary: 76%

Job Title: Data processing equipment operator

Salary: $31,269