NEW ROCHELLE, NY — The New Rochelle school system this month has implemented Timepiece, a “real-time, fully integrated time and attendance management software solution” which reliably “automates the process of managing time and labor information”. The hardware and software solution is a module available through Finance Manager which is the financial system which has been used by the City School District of New Rochelle for years.
Buildings and Grounds are required to use the TimePiece system to punch in upon arrival, departure and before and after lunch break. The system is districtwide so they can punch in at one building and punch out at another as B&G workers are often assigned to different buildings during the day and over the course of a pay period. To use the system, employees are required to type in a code and then place their finger on a scanner. While no such system will prevent workers from punching in, then sneaking off to Dunkin’ Donuts for a few hours and then punching back out later in the day, requiring 4 interactions with the system is a good start towards curbing fraud and abuse.
Talk of the Sound has requested information from the District on the total cost of implementation, the perceived benefits and whether there is a plan to expand the use of TimePiece to cover all employees who fill out time sheets (security guards, monitors, aides, etc.) and are thus eligible for overtime. And whether the system will be expanded to track all District employees including teachers and administrators. This article will be updated to include any responses.
The advertised benefits of TimePiece are listed on the company website:
- Reduce administrative and personnel costs
- Collect accurate and reliable employee time & attendance
- Prevents payments for unauthorized jobs
- Realize greater personnel accountability
- Eliminate “buddy punching”
- Increase control with real-time reporting capabilities
- Reduce payroll errors while increasing productivity
- Monitor employees
EDITOR’S NOTE: It has been more than five years since your correspondent, Robert Cox, as a school board candidate, and Talk of the Sound, began advocating for the implementation of a biometric time-and-attendance system to keep track of employees working for the City School District of New Rochelle. Over that time, we have published numerous articles highlight the various ways in which the paper-based time sheet system was routinely abused by employees, clerical staff and Aramark management to pay out large sums of unearned regular pay and overtime. The implementation of TimePiece represents a significant milestone in our efforts to root out corruption in the New Rochelle schools – along with our efforts to implement GPS tracking systems in vehicles, terminate Assistant Superintendent for Business & Administration John Quinn, Director of Environmental Services John Gallagher and his entire Aramark management team, get school board meetings on TV, end the practice of doing public business in executive session and stalling or refusing public records requests and more. Still missing — a Buildings and Grounds inventory management system to avoid wholesale theft of Buildings and Grounds supplies. Next is the adoption of the TimePiece systemwide so that every employee clocks in and out the same as Buildings and Grounds employees.