District reports staffing turnover and payroll-system cleanup; some employees received a second check

Prosser School District administrators reported multiple recent departures among long-term administrative staff in transportation, food service, maintenance and finance and described an ongoing cleanup of personnel records and payroll processing.

At the July meeting a district administrator said the district lost several employees who collectively provided “about a hundred years of historical knowledge.” That staff turnover has required the district to rebuild data tables and update employee records. The administrator said the team spent two days cleaning the human-resources data to reduce an active employee list from roughly 1,500 to about 700 current records by deactivating former employees and updating classifications.

Because of payroll-system adjustments the district ran an extra payroll cycle. The administrator said some employees received a check on June 30 and again on July 2 as staff completed corrections. The district acknowledged that the payroll processing issues meant some employees were not paid on the usual schedule while staff worked to resolve records and process time sheets. The administrator described efforts to find affordable external help to train staff on complex payroll and HR systems and to modernize inconsistent legacy filing practices left by departed employees.

District staff also said they are testing a new electronic time-sheet process for bus drivers and other hourly employees and reported progress in several procedural areas.

Ending: The district said it is continuing record cleanup and staff training to stabilize payroll and HR processing and will report further updates to the board when system changes and staffing capacity improve.