School District to Fingerprint Volunteers

Parent volunteers who work with students in the Higley Unified School District will now be fingerprinted and the district may choose to conduct a background check.

The school board approved the new policy Thursday night that will be piloted through the end of the year. The district wants to assess the costs, which run between $25 and $60 per volunteer, and plans to survey parents and school staff to determine if this is the path the district wants to take, said Denise Birdwell, a district associate superintendent.

“It’s not a requirement to fingerprint parents, but it is our obligation to fingerprint adults working with our kids,” Birdwell said.

Parent volunteers who work in a school office or help under the supervision of a teacher will now be asked to complete a volunteer information form that includes employment and criminal history. Birdwell calls the form an “honesty check.”

The three-tiered policy outlines what checks the district will conduct depending on how much interaction the volunteer has with students.

Volunteers also will now receive a basic orientation including information on the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, first aid and CPR, and guidelines on how best to interact with students and how to avoid false accusations.

The district has been discussing how to change the policy on fingerprinting volunteers after inconsistencies were found on who should and shouldn’t be fingerprinted. The board last talked about the policy in January.

Before this new policy, the district did not fingerprint parents volunteering for field trips or those who work in classrooms, but did fingerprint volunteer coaches.

The district put in place a more stringent employee fingerprint policy last year after a former band assistant, who had not been fingerprinted, was charged with sexually assaulting a student.

Schools Fail to Check Record of Bus Drivers, Montee Says

School districts are not always meeting requirements for bus driver drug testing and criminal record checks.

And even if they did, state Auditor Susan Montee said it would not be enough to protect child passengers.

A state audit released yesterday finds that about 3 percent of bus drivers and aides never had a fingerprint criminal record check.

State Lags on School Background Checks

People with criminal histories have been able to work in area schools for several months because of delays in state-managed background checks of new hires.

Total backlog in Albany right now: Close to 800 cases.

The issue hit home for the Utica City School District, where it was discovered May 19 that an unidentified part-time lunch monitor at Proctor High School failed to clear the fingerprinting check.

Austin Educator Background Checks Turn up 15 Felonies, 241 Misdemeanors

The Austin school district has fingerprinted about two-thirds of its approximately 6,600 certified educators, and criminal histories have popped up for 256 employees after a search of a national crime database.

Checks as of Feb. 20 found that 15 educators had felony criminal records, while the other 241 had misdemeanor criminal records, according to information released under the Texas Public Information Act.

Teachers Could Get Stuck With Tab for Fingerprints

More than 400,000 teachers and other school professionals in Texas might have to pay about $50 each to have their fingerprints taken under a new school safety law enacted this year.

Although teacher-group leaders were assured that the state would pick up the cost of the fingerprinting and mandatory criminal background checks, lawmakers did not include funding in the state budget, and efforts to find the money – about $25 million – through other channels have been unsuccessful.