Background Searches
Schools Finally Doing Better Checks
By Daniel Muniz

After years of pressure, especially from the scandals that garnered national attention, many states are finally getting serious about performing thorough background checks on all faculty, staff, and administrative personnel of their school districts. And what they are finding has been an eye opening experience.

According to my local newspaper, The San Antonio Express-News, the first national background search using fingerprints for the school district I live in turn up "276 misdemeanor and four felony charges." That prompted the school district to immediately get rid of some of these bad apples.

But what made this development in my hometown so monumental is that it was a real nationwide search.

The biggest criticism heaped on school districts across the country is that their routine background checks has always been limited to the local and state level and even that investigation was hardly comprehensive at all. As a result, any kind of crime committed in another state or under another identity would never show up in these kinds of inquiries. And it was precisely such a loophole that allowed so many people who should never have been working in an educational environment in the first place the blank slate they needed to be hired by a school district.
 

Story Continues Below ê

Today's Top Stories

● Big Spenders - The Lost Vision of the GOP ● Construction Frenzy - The Bogus Overcrowded School Crisis ● Case Settled? - Global Warming Myths: Part 1 ● Slavery and the Founders - Our Founders were not Ignorant ● Polygraph Exams - Can It Really Detect Lies? ● Leaving the Big City - Millions Flee Metropolitan Areas

Yesterday's Top Stories

● Ending Poverty - Is There a Government Solution? ● Dropout Factories - Schools that Specialize in Dropouts ● MySpace Problems - But What About The Parents? ● Hidden In Plain Sight - Do Sex Offenders Live Nearby? ● Doctors Gone Wild - Hospitals Reinforce Dress Codes ● Poor Minorities - A Collective Moral Responsibility?

However, thoroughly checking someone’s criminal record is not easy.

Although conspiracy theorists believe otherwise, there is not one central repository where everybody’s personal information is electronically stored, even when it comes to crime. There happens to be multiple national databases across the country that has different types of data in it. And that is why the extreme of taking fingerprints and running it through these databases is perhaps the most definitive way to root out an elusive individual with a shady past.

Sifting through state and local records for a hiring process was never enough. For far too long, it was ridiculously easy for a miscreant to move to another state and find employment at a school. The background searches were too localized to pick up what should have been obvious red flags.

Overall, it is fairly self-evident that someone with a felony or convicted of any kind of violent crime should not be in the classroom but it was just too easy to slip through the cracks. And an applicant is not about to voluntarily reveal such damning personal information particularly if there isn’t a way for a school district to ever uncover it.

Consequently, it was this dangerously lax atmosphere that opened up the door for more problems down the road. And a lot of schools paid a big price when faculty or staff did something outrageous.

Of course such nationwide background searches won’t make all schools completely safe and that is not what its purpose is intended to accomplish. Rather, it prevents the people with criminal records from ever getting hired. After all, these records are public information and it is time for schools to start examining all them.

Regrettably, that is also the biggest weaknesses that will always hinder the goal to hiring decent employees.

As a government employee, especially with the backing of a union, it is next to impossible to fire a bad teacher, which is why it is so rare for it to happen. It is simply cost prohibitive to do so, even when an educator is caught red handed doing something that would have gotten a private sector employee fired right on the spot. And there are plenty of instances where an educator is sitting in a jail cell while still collecting a paycheck.

The best that a school district could ever hope for is to bluff a teacher into resigning with empty promises that they will file charges if they don’t.

Unfortunately, such a move sweeps a problem under the rug and keeps it hidden away.

That faculty or staff member is then able to walk away unscathed while being able to apply at another school district with a clean slate because their former employer refused to press charges.

Sadly, school districts do this all the time even if it is blatant criminal behavior such as forgery, falsify documents, and stealing in the campus. It is just too much of a hassle and too expensive to fire someone that needs to be fired. About the only exception are the sex crimes but that too is only a recent development.

Accordingly, there is no failsafe way to keep all of the bad apples out of our education system until our school districts have the ability to fire teachers on the spot as well as being willing to press charges.

But a complete nationwide search using fingerprints is a very good start.

Schools should have been doing this long ago when the feasibility became readily available. And the only reason that school districts in Texas as well as in other states are doing them at all is because they are forced to ever since state legislatures made it mandatory.

You would think that this would have been a no-brainer but that hasn’t been the case. It has taken a lot of prodding to get these extensive background searches done.

Either way, more of our children are now a little bit safer.

We want your opinion! Tell us what you thought about this article. Click the Your Feedback menu item to send us your comments.