A year after starting background checks into every one of their employees, schools have not found any convictions or arrests that may have slipped by since the employees were hired, school officials said.
So far, schools have done checks on more than 1,300 teachers and employees in the last year, costing thousands of dollars to meet a new state requirement that schools must check the criminal backgrounds of all employees every five years.
None of the school districts have found any convictions, arrests or anything else that would cause concern, officials said.
“That’s what we would hope, but the thing is, we are looking for that,” Clark-Pleasant Assistant Superintendent John Schilawski said. “You are looking for, did someone sneak past?”
Each school district is performing their background checks differently.
Under the legislation approved last year, schools are required to check the backgrounds of all of their teachers, administrators and other staff every five years. In the past, schools were required to run background checks when they hired someone. The intent of the new law is to make sure those checks are continual, and if someone has been arrested since getting their job, the school district will know about it.
The law is adding more work for the administration and human resources department, who have to know who needs to be checked next, send out notices informing those employees and then make sure everyone completes the background checks.
“It’s no doubt more labor, but it’s what we do,” Greenwood Superintendent Kent DeKoninck said.
The goal of the law is to further protect the safety of students, Schilawski said.
“Each of the changes, even though it is more work, it’s important,” Schilawski said. “We have to do anything and everything we can to make sure our kids are safe.”
Schools don’t have to complete background checks for all employees right away. The law allows schools to check 20 percent of the staff each year, and then repeat the process when the full five years are up.
That is what Greenwood schools is doing. The school started with the senior employees and will move on to the next 20 percent this year, DeKoninck said.
At Clark-Pleasant, their method is slightly different. Last year, the school checked all employees hired in or before 2012, Schilawski said.
This was a large group because many teachers began working at the district before 2012, Schilawski said. The school checked 450 to 500 employees, costing around $10,000, he said.
This year, they will check employees hired in 2013, which is around 50 people, Schilawski said.
He expects the cost for the background checks to go down significantly this year because of the smaller number. But in another five years, they will have to check about 500 employees again.
“In another five years, we’ll have to take another hit like that,” Schilawski said.
In Franklin, the school district decided to check all 700 employees at once in January and repeat the checks every five years, Superintendent David Clendening said. This cost the school more than $18,000, he said.
“It was a matter of organization and it was more efficient to have everyone at once and just do it again five years later,” Clendening said.
Staff members are notified by their school districts when they need to complete the background check. They then will need to go through the company the school uses to complete the check.
Greenwood schools has their employees pay for their own background checks, which are about $30, DeKoninck said.
Clark-Pleasant and Franklin pay for all their employees’ background checks.
