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SFUSD updates board on Frontline/Red Rover payroll transition and unveils central‑office reorganization to cut $34M in FTE costs
Summary
District staff and vendor partners reported progress and risks on the Frontline/Red Rover ERP payroll transition, including a July 1 go‑live target with contingency planning; the superintendent also proposed a central‑office reorganization and 205‑FTE reduction to close a $114M budget gap.
District leaders gave two linked operational updates: a technical and risk briefing on a planned Frontline (ERP) and Red Rover (HCM) rollout and a separate proposal to reduce central-office staffing and contracts to close a $114 million budget gap.
On the ERP/HCM transition, staff said they chose Frontline and Red Rover as California K–12 solutions to replace the district's unstable SAP/Empower systems and reduce long-term maintenance. Presenters reported that roughly 74% of technical work is complete, but they acknowledged a recent performance slowdown in Frontline's budget module as principals began entering budgets. The vendor and district teams said they have run payroll simulations (including a sample payroll run on April 18) and that calculations produced expected results; the major remaining challenge is cleaning and aligning master data across legacy systems.
District and vendor representatives outlined a two-phase plan to protect mission-critical functions for a July 1 go-live: prioritize payroll and core HR functions (phase 1) and defer nonessential modules to post-go-live (phase 2). They emphasized daily vendor-district collaboration, available short-term contract staffing to do manual data remediation, and contingencies that could delay go-live to January 2026 if critical swim-lane tasks fail. "If something changes in phase 1, we would pause and reflect whether or not we will be ready to go live on July 1," a district leader said.
Separately, Superintendent Sue Hsu presented a draft central-office reorganization that would reduce roughly 205 FTEs, yielding about $33.9 million in position-based savings and roughly $41.4 million including proposed non-FTE (contractual) reductions. Of the 205 positions, staff said 75 are vacant, 30 are anticipated SERP (buyout) separations and about 100 would be layoffs; 72 of the roles targeted are in management classifications.
The reorganization would shrink the superintendent's executive team and merge functions to create a smaller cabinet focused on academics and accountability, special education, finance and technology, and operations. Staff acknowledged painful human impacts and said they plan to post new merged job descriptions and hold a competitive internal/external hiring process for the new structure, while continuing principal and stakeholder engagement.
Board members asked detailed questions about pay-simulation results, contingency plans for payroll if the new system fails, the estimated SERP costs (staff estimated roughly $5 million total), and whether temporary contract savings would be sufficient to hit the multi‑year targets. Staff committed to deeper multi-year projections, additional contract reviews (noting $3.8M of immediate non-FTE savings identified), and more granular school-by-school budget reconciliations before the district adopts its final budget in June.
Ending: Staff said they will continue simulations, deepen their contract-savings analysis, and return with a third‑interim report showing multi‑year projections; commissioners and community groups urged careful monitoring to avoid site-level harm and requested follow-up briefings on contingency plans and SERP cost impacts.
