Gaston County teachers gather outside of South Point High School to protest against payroll issues

GASTON COUNTY, N.C. — Gaston County School teachers stood outside of South Point High School in Belmont before school last week to protest against ongoing payroll problems.

Teachers had enough of the issue and could be seen outside of South Point with a big banner that read “Fix Payroll Now” and wore red.

Bobbie Cavnar, a teacher at South Point and the organizer of the event, says the county updated the payroll system in January and even though it’s been 9-months, the problem has not been fixed.

“Last night, we actually received an email that admitted, finally, that this is affecting thousands of different employees and there are hundreds of issues and they as far as we can tell were just not letting us know what was happening,” Cavnar said.

Channel 9′s Ken Lemon reported in August that Gaston County has been the beta tester for a new system that’s supposed to simplify the payment process for the state, but there were problems from the start back in January.

On Monday night, the Gaston County School District said it continues to make progress in resolving the ongoing issues. They held a virtual forum for teachers in an attempt to address the employees who say they feel shortchanged.

Teacher Valerie Shuler told us last month her patience has run out. She says she loves teaching, but love isn’t enough to get her back to Bessemer City High School -- she’s still waiting on her first paycheck of the school year.

“I have a mortgage due on the first of the month, how do I pay my mortgage?” Shuler told Lemon.

Shuler said when the county moved to the new system in January, some of her checks had too many deductions. Now she’s got no check at all after the first week of class. She said she was told to go to school administrators for a handwritten check, but that didn’t work either.

“They said you are not in the pay system for a paycheck,” Shuler said.

The North Carolina Association of Educators says up to 500 Gaston County educators either didn’t get direct deposit in August, or were grossly underpaid or overcharged in deductions.

One educator was charged well over $300 and that’s not all.

“I haven’t even begun to add up the charges from the individual companies,” an educator told Channel 9.

Gaston County Schools chief communications officer Todd Hagans said in August they sent 180 printed checks to cover missing direct deposits and they are trying to determine why some employees had double deductions on their deposits.

Channel 9 has reached out to Gaston County Schools for comment on Friday’s protest.

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Gaston County Schools faces teacher shortages as kids return to class

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