PLYMOUTH, Mass. – About 1,300 employees of Massachusetts’ Plymouth Public Schools got a little something special for Christmas last week.

But it wasn’t at all what they expected.

Plymouth school employees were supposed to receive their paychecks directly deposited the day after Christmas, but instead their bi-monthly pay amount was deducted from their bank accounts, WCVB reports.

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“I first heard from my bank, notification that my account was below a certain level,” one teacher told Wicked Local Plymouth. “With my mortgage going out the first of the year and other bills to pay, I am essentially several thousand dollars in the red.

“Then, later, I got a call from a friend telling me I had better check my email. And there was an email from the superintendent,” the teacher said.

Plymouth Superintendent Gary Maestas sent the email to all school employees on Friday notifying them that a human error caused the amount that was supposed to paid to be deducted from the accounts of about 1,300 district employees, Boston.com reports.

The district’s finance director and the town treasurer were working to fix the issue, he said, but some banks were unable to correct the error until today.

“Maestas said … Bank of America, Citizens Bank, and Santander have refused to make corrections until Monday, the next business day,” according to Boston.com.

“We have hundreds of banks associated with these accounts, and right now we are calling each, informing them of the situation and asking that they return the funds,” Plymouth town manager Melissa Arrighi told Wicked Local on Friday.

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Predictibly, teachers were not happy about the situation, in part because district officials opted to send an email instead of contacting employees by phone.

“A lot of people don’t check their email when they are on vacation,” a teacher told Wicked Local, “so I am sure there are still people who don’t know what’s going on.”

“I can’t believe this was even possible,” another teacher said. “How can they take money out of your account without your permission?”

Those teachers did not want to be identified by name, Wicked Local reports.

But Lauri and Frank Smith, both Plymouth teachers, told WCVB the mistake essentially cost them a month’s worth of pay at a time they need the money the most.

“We know that teachers don’t get Christmas bonuses, but we never thought that we’d be in the position to be giving the town a Christmas bonus,” Lauri said.

“It was scary, knowing that we were missing that money,” Frank said. “We’re concerned for our younger teachers who are on the lower end of the pay scale.”

By Saturday, 704 of the debit deductions had been rectified, with 591 to go, Arrighi said.

“We intend to work with school employees on any fees they are charged because of this mistake and have commitments from most of the banks to do that as well,” she wrote in a statement, according to WCVB. “We are also correcting the internal error so that this cannot happen again.”