Another case of ineffective, flawed background checks infiltrating our schools across the country. Unfortunately, when the government legislates how background checks should be done our children suffer. Federal, State and Local governments need to follow the private sector and perform employment screening properly. I am not going to regurgitate this process again in this blog, better that you read employment screening 101! The numbers in this article are staggering, frankly I find the results unacceptable. Parents should be very concerned and outright mad!
Audit Discovers Criminals Working in Schools
By Kirsten Stewart
The Salt Lake Tribune
Posted: 04/07/2009 10:53:03 PM MDT
Public school employees with convictions for felony sex assault, indecent exposure, drug possession and aggravated assault turned up in a legislative probe that labels Utah’s system for vetting such workers “flawed and ineffective.”
Auditors, who randomly chose 1,209 people, found 17 school employees with so-called “concerning” criminal convictions either before or after they were hired, and sometimes both. The criminal histories surfaced in a limited survey of Jordan, Granite, Davis and Salt Lake school district rosters — only a sliver of more than 70,000 school employees statewide, the vast majority of whom are law-abiding.
But the random sample’s size only “magnifies” the problem, said Brian Dean, an audit supervisor in the Office of the Legislative Auditor General.
Dean faulted gaps in Utah law, education policy and lack of follow-through by state and local authorities. Lawmakers on Tuesday approved a motion to send copies of the report to subcommittees for review and action.
Expressing “sincere appreciation” for the teachers, guidance counselors and custodians who “do their jobs honorably,” House Speaker Dave Clark, R-Santa Clara, said the failure to crack down on “outliers” devalues most school employees’ good work.
Utah education officials vowed to tighten rules governing background checks. But those efforts will come at a price — up to $2.6 million, they warned. And no criminal screening is perfect.
