It was supposed to be their first paycheck of the school year, but hundreds of Baltimore City Public School employees were left asking what happened when they were not paid as expected.
About 300 of them stood in line at the administration building into the early evening on Friday trying to figure out why that first payment was missing.
"I remember walking in and just be astounded at how I had to keep walking down the building down the hallway to stand in line to find out whether my check was sent," Shira Levy said.
"I checked my bank account this morning, there had been no funds transferred even though I had given them my direct deposit information," Arthur Kauffman said.
Just like Levy and Kauffman, most of the people impacted are new hires or transfers. Their checks were either not processed, sent to the wrong address, or had money missing.
This is a problem city schools have run into before. It is also something even those new hires had heard about.
"We were wondering at what point would we start getting paid. At what point would the city start acknowledging that we had been hired, because apparently being hired by the school and being filed and acknowledged by the district are two different things," Bradley Wright, a new teacher at Coppin Academy High School, told ABC2.
School leaders explain in fact they are two different things with two different systems to handle them.
"At the beginning of the year, theres a push certainly to get a number of people processed. It's an archaic way of supporting first paycheck. I'm pleased to say that we actually set money aside this year to actually have an implementation system where we can interface all of the databases. Hopefully this is the last year we're going to be in this position," School CEO Dr. Gregory Thornton said.
Thornton said the answer is an integrated system that will allow all the databases to work together and automate the check process.
Some people walked out with checks, or went home to get theirs, while others left empty handed.
"I think Baltimore city has some of the greatest teachers in the world and we were all standing in line waiting to be paid and I think a lot of people are leaving disappointed," Kauffman said.
School leaders told ABC2 everyone should have their paychecks by Monday.
