SAN DIEGO UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT Proposal No. P12-107-12

GENERAL REQUIREMENTS (Scope of Work)

SCOPE OF WORK

The purpose of this request for proposals is to provide the San Diego Unified School District with financial, human resources, and student information systems procured from qualified systems manufacturers that can meet the current and future systems needs and services requirements of the District.

  1. HUMAN RESOURCES SYSTEM OVERVIEW

(A listing of current human resources systems is enclosed as “Appendix A”. The Excel file document outlining all requirements—which calls for your response—is enclosed as “Appendix B”, and includes a glossary of HR terms).

Subsystems:

Benefits

Payroll

Personnel

Position Control

SDUSD HRMS systems are mainly comprised of 30-year-old legacy mainframe code that was recently migrated to the client/server platform during the Y2K conversion. This includes Payroll, Personnel, and Benefit systems. Other “stand alone” applications have been bought or built over the past decade using PowerBuilder, MS Access, and other miscellaneous development tools. There is no true integration between any of these systems. Sharing of data between the systems is not automatic. Each area is responsible for the entry of data for their respective departments. There are some data transfers through manual interfaces or system upload/download programs.

Benefits Overview

SDUSD offers basic medical, dental, and life insurance to all active monthly employees and their dependents. Employees are eligible for these benefits on the first day of the month following the month in which they were hired. Certificated employees’ eligibility dates are dependent upon their contract and the signing date of that contract.

In addition to Social Security benefits, classified employees are entitled to the benefits of the Public Employees Retirement System (PERS). Certificated employees receive benefits from the State Teachers Retirement System (STRS), but are ineligible to participate in Social Security. Payments into PERS and STRS are calculated on specific gross wages as a pre-tax deduction. All District employees are eligible to participate in Tax Sheltered Annuities (403b). For the most part, 403b’s follow most of the same rules and regulations as 401k plans. The District also contributes one percent (1.00%) of some employee’s annual earnings to a 401(a) plan

Monthly employees working half time or less may purchase medical benefits. For example, an employee working .25 FTE would pay 6/8 of premium and the district would pay 2/8. Job-sharing employees share benefits and may share in any proportion based in their agreement, not on the percentage of time worked. They may purchase additional life insurance and Accidental Death and Dismemberment insurance. Employee contributions are required to participate in these programs. Retirees and surviving dependents may also purchase benefits. The district may bill people for these premiums.

The Benefits department also administers the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) program. When an employee leaves their job, notification of the COBRA program is sent to the employee. If they desire to purchase this insurance, they submit an application to the Benefits department. The department prints payments slips for the employees and monitors premiums due and payments made.

  1. HUMAN RESOURCES SYSTEM OVERVIEW—continued

Open Enrollment Processing

Open enrollment is available in November of each year. This is the only time changes to benefits are allowed for active employees except for certain life events such as the birth of a child. The third party administrator, VEBA, sends a report to SDUSD of all changes entered by the employees through their web site or hard-copy forms.

Payroll Overview

Time and Labor Collecting

Substitute teachers are tracked through a subsystem (SEMS) with electronic time cards sent to Payroll. School site personnel gather daily absence information from the SEMS system.

Most of the district uses paper time cards and time sheets, which are received via intra-district mail from the school sites and departments. They are sorted and distributed to the appropriate Payroll Technician.

Time Cards: Time cards must have budget approval prior to processing for payment. Once approved, the technician enters an assignment ID on each card and batches in lots of 100 accompanied by a batch header form and sends to Data Entry. After input, the time cards are returned to the technician for verification and filing.

Warrant Processing

The “normal” warrants processing is done twice a month. The processing of the warrants for monthly employees is started one week prior to the end of the month and paid on the last day of the month for work performed that month. The processing of warrants for hourly employees is started at the end of the month and paid on the 10th of the following month. The exception to this process is during the month of December. Rather than having the checks for teachers dated December 31, they are dated for the first “special” payroll in January.

California Education Code controls the timing of paydays for Certificated and Classified employees. There are specific rules for each group.

Special payrolls are processed, typically weekly, to correct errors or other necessary adjustments and are always printed warrants (no electronic deposits).

Once Fiscal Control approves the accuracy of the payroll, the warrants are distributed to the employees and the information is electronically sent to the banks for the electronic deposits. The banks must receive the transmissions within the legally required time frame.

Occasionally it is necessary to process a payroll warrant outside of the normal or special payroll runs. When this happens, Fiscal Control writes the check from a separate cash account referred to as the Revolving Cash Fund. A copy of the Revolving Cash Form accompanies the warrant to the employee and is used as the pay stub. During special Revolving Cash Form payroll runs, a warrant will be printed payable to the Revolving Cash Fund to re-pay the manual warrant.

On a quarterly basis, IT produces files for state and federal tax reporting and payment, and sends to the county for reconciliation.

On an annual basis, IT prints W-2 forms for employee tax reporting.

1. HUMAN RESOURCES SYSTEM OVERVIEW--continued

Personnel Overview

Applicant Tracking

The district is in the process of implementing SearchSoft, an applicant tracking system. This is being done as a three-phase project.

  • Phase 1, for certificated non-management positions, is currently up and running.
  • Phase 2, for management positions, is very close to going live.
  • Phase 3, for classified positions, is scheduled to go live by the end of the calendar year.

Retros

Due to cost of living adjustments and contract agreements, retroactive payments are generated for groups or all District employees. The payments are made on specific types of monies earned.

Credentials

Registration of state issued credentials, permits, waivers or certificates is currently processed by viewing official registration records by County link or Commission on-line data. This data is copied and "re-keyed" into the district credential database. Additionally authorized district staff issue and document temporary certificates for employees renewing credentials or applying first time through the district application process. Other types of district earned certificates are also entered into the database. This data generates reports for district monitoring, and notices to employees regarding their credentialing needs or deadlines. The system requirements for district certification records are much greater now, based on recent legislation involving school districts in the process of training and recommending credential issuance directly to the Commission staff.

Education

Certificated employee salary placement and advancement criteria are based on certifications, university earned degrees and creditable upper division or graduate units from accredited universities. The district currently maintains educational information on a separate system (PowerBuilder) which is not integrated with the existing HRMS SQL database. Updating the payroll system requires manual processing. Classified educational information is not maintained on any district system.

Demographics

Demographic information on district employees is maintained and viewed from the “employee master” display screen located in the client/server application. The employee demographic data is kept in an employee table in SQL Server. Each independent system requires input of the same demographic information.

Evaluations

An annual report from the client/server database is mailed to site administrators (via personnel) listing names of certificated staff members requiring performance evaluations for the school year. Classified management receives a computer generated evaluation report for each classified employee due for an evaluation based on date constraints in the system. The necessity to track performance outside of normal evaluations requires use of a separate File-Maker Pro database. All documentation is completed manually and retained in the personnel file.

  1. HUMAN RESOURCES SYSTEM OVERVIEW—continued

Post and Bid

The Post and Bid (transfer) process is used by certificated employees to seek and secure changes in their classroom teaching assignments within the district. Currently, this process is held in February, May and July in order to meet staffing needs for the ensuing school year. Human Resource Services Division posts known vacancies on the district web-site. All applicants (current employees) apply on-line for consideration. Awarding of positions is based upon criteria specified in the posting, e.g.: seniority, credential authorizations, and major or minor university degrees.

Substitute Staffing

A third party vendor, e-SCHOOLS, is used for notification of absences, contacting substitutes by telephone, visually documenting on the computer screen and running reports. A separate timekeeping system routes substitute teacher timecards for payroll processing.

Position Control Overview

There is no position control currently utilized by the district at this time. When a new position is created or a position becomes vacant, a paper Assignment Authorization form is completed. This form must be routed through various departments for approval or processing, but there is currently no tracking capability. The volume of these forms is such that it is nearly impossible for the originating party to locate their Assignment Authorization form when it appears to be “stuck” somewhere. This is an area that nearly everyone interviewed expressed concern and requested an on-line form with approval routings.

There is a definite requirement for a “Position Control Management System.” This system would drive the system by position, rather than employee. The system should allow staff to attach data to the positions and move employees in and out of those positions. Personnel should be able to track specific information related to a position, such as salary or standard hours, regardless of whether an employee fills it. And they should be able to use data specific to each position as the basis for organizational planning, recruitment, career planning, and budgeting.

2 FINANCIAL SYSTEM OVERVIEW

(A list of current financial systems is included as “Appendix C”. A list of requirements—which calls for proposer response—is included as “Appendix D”, and includes a glossary of Finance System terms).

Subsystems:

Accounts Payable

Accounts Receivable

Associated Student Body (ASB)

Budget

Cash Management

Fixed Assets

General Ledger

Position Control

Procurement

Risk Management

Work Order (Job Cost)

Miscellaneous (Fiscal Control, Food Services, Mandated Costs)

The current financial system is very complex and inefficient. The technology ranges from old legacy systems to client server systems that have been implemented as recently as 1999. There is no true integration between any of these systems. Data are moved via batch uploads and downloads creating an extensive need for reconciliation between systems. Data integrity and duplication of effort dominate individual roles and responsibilities throughout the district. Ad-hoc reporting is generally accomplished using Infomaker. Often, information is exported from those queries into Excel for various needed reports.

ACCOUNTS PAYABLE

Accounts Payable processes all payments for disbursements other than payroll. Vouchers are entered on a client-server system developed internally that went into production in 1994. The system was developed with the PowerBuilder application development tool. There is no automated integration to the general ledger system but there are batch uploads from the Accounts Payable system to the Financial Database (FDB). Budgets are a key driver for Accounts Payable but no integration to the budgets/appropriations Financial Database(FDB) system exists.

Encumbrance Accounting

The District applies the encumbrance accounting model to the outstanding liabilities. The Accounts Payable and Budget departments ensure encumbrances are set and released appropriately. Encumbrances are released after contractual obligations are met. Cash position analysis/forecasting is extremely important to the school District and is directly related to the amount of monies that are encumbered.

Voucher Processing

Accounts Payable utilizes a manual 3-way match for invoices that have Purchase Orders and Receipts Data. Integrity is accomplished by comparing adding machine tape of batched invoices to the proof report run in the Accounts Payable system. Invoice volume is high – an estimated 15,000 vouchers/invoices per month. Accounts Payable processed approximately 230,000 vouchers/invoices last year.

2FINANCIAL SYSTEM OVERVIEW—continued

Currently, all paid invoices with supporting documentation are scanned. This equates to approximately 40,000 documents monthly. The scanning system has 3 indexes and reads a bar code for indexing. Archived documents must be accessible for at least 5 years.

Procurement Cards Processing

There are approximately 900 procurement cards distributed throughout the District. Personnel needing to purchase items pertaining to their school site have the authority to charge the purchase using the procurement cards. The site is responsible for reconciling, gathering appropriate approvals and assigning the proper budget charge numbers. Procurement card statements are matched against the original receipt at the school site. After reconciliation is completed the documents are forwarded to Budget and then to Accounts Payable for payment. Accounts Payable will then issue a warrant directly to the credit card company.

Reporting

All vendors providing a service to the district are reviewed to determine status as an in-state or out-of-state vendor. 1099 forms must be sent annually to any vendor whose service totals $600.00 or more for the year. A withholding of 7% must be done on each of these vendors who are not exempted by completing a form 590 provided by the district and whose payments equal $1501 or more.

Changing laws and complex reporting requirements make this function time consuming. The current method of flagging/tracking withholding activity is extremely inefficient. The current system is not easily customized and has forced users to find manual workarounds.

The District is in compliance with the California Independent Contractor Reporting Law, DE542.

Warrant Processing

Reimbursement claims are sent to the Budget Analysts who are responsible for checking if funding is appropriate for the activity and if funds are available. After approval the source documents are forwarded to Accounts Payable for the warrants to be issued. Warrants are issued twice weekly and sent to their respective vendors. The warrants are drawn against the County, which acts as a clearinghouse for the district.

ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE

Approximately 70% of revenues are attributed to the Average Daily Attendance (ADA) that is handled within the Pupil Accounting Department. The California Department of Education funds the District based upon ADA. Typical Accounts Receivable functions do not apply to this funding source.

Activities that are tracked through Accounts Receivable systems include: facilities rentals which generate income by utilizing the grounds of closed school sites as a leasing asset (tracked using Lotus 1-2-3) and invoices from activities such as warranty recovery (tracked in a FoxPro database). The district also bills various school districts for use of the LiveScan fingerprinting system. This receivable data is maintained entirely in the LiveScan system. There is no requirement for data to be extracted from these systems, except at year-end when all outstanding receivables are accrued and entered via a manual journal. Additionally, catering activities of Food Services are billed via the MBA Accounts Receivable Module.

2. FINANCIAL SYSTEM OVERVIEW—continued

ASSOCIATED STUDENT BODY (ASB)

Some schools have retail stores where various items can be purchased. The software utilized is called School Controller by Blue Bear Software. It is used to track all student purchases by means of a Student Identification Card (SIC), which has a barcode that corresponds to a number unique to each student. When a student purchases an item the SIC card is scanned. Income data gathered from the Blue Bear Software is manually entered into Quickbooks Pro. These reports are reviewed by financial accounting monthly but are not recorded until year-end where they are entered as part of the consolidated financials.

Check Processing at School Sites

Quickbooks Pro is utilized for the record keeping of the Associated Student Body (ASB) for each school site. All cash transactions deposits or expenditures are handled by the School Financial Clerk/Secretary. Funds are reconciled to the bank statement on a monthly basis. SDUSD requires that any money received for the ASB must be counted and deposited the same day. Checks are written for fundraisers, yearbooks, picnics, etc. as required. The schools maintain a chart of accounts for the ASB within the Quickbooks system. These accounts are debited/credited accordingly depending on the fundraising requirements.

Reporting

School Sites generate numerous reports on a regular basis from the Blue Bear Software program. Some examples include: