SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KRON) – Hundreds of teachers and San Francisco Unified School District employees say that have not been paid in months and they have taken their frustration directly to the district offices.

From Monday to Tuesday, about 20 teachers, district employees, and union representatives held a sit-in overnight at the school district headquarters to express their frustration that teachers and employees have not been paid or paid incorrectly for several months.

A few of the teachers who have not been paid spoke on Tuesday morning saying this is really impacting people’s lives.

Many teachers have second jobs in order to make ends meet. Many of them live paycheck to paycheck and not getting paid is a big problem.

“We really reached a breaking point. I mean, my colleagues, my coworkers are having to pay bank overdraft fees, you know, they’re potentially getting evicted. These are incredibly unstable living situations and conditions to be dealing with. This economic instability is not only going to impact us but also the students and their learning conditions,” substitute teacher Sabine Wildman said.

Now, the school district says they agree with the teachers, they agree with the unions and that these teachers need to be paid and are working as quickly as possible to resolve the problem that says the issue occurred because the districts switched to a new payroll system recently.

Most of the teachers and employees of the district, thousands of them have been paid correctly, but a handful possibly hundreds have not so they’ve shifted resources and staff over to deal with this problem as quickly as possible.

On Tuesday afternoon, Superintendent Dr. Vincent Matthews shared the following statement:

“Our goal right now is to address the most critical issues of underpayment or non-payment first, and we are in the process of writing checks to provide every dollar and cent of the back pay owed to the employees who have been the most impacted. In the coming days we will continue to provide every staff member with all of the back pay they are owed. Every employee will be paid what they are due.

Starting Monday, March 21 employees will be able to input COVID-19 sick leave, including any sick leave that was COVID-related that has already been taken. Per our health and safety agreement with our labor partners and state law, SFUSD is offering an additional 10 days of sick leave for employees to be taken for COVID-19 related reasons.

Since SFUSD transitioned to the new system, we have responded to 1,003 reports of underpayment. Of those reports, 942 have been individually investigated and resolved. If there was payment owed, SFUSD has paid the employee. As of now, there remain 59 outstanding reports that we are investigating. Our goal is to have the final 59 of the 1,000 reports investigated resolved no later than this Friday.”