Texas School District Fingerprinting Kicks off This Year
About 1 million educators and school staff across the state will get to know their fingerprint a little better this year thanks to a Senate bill enacted in June.The bill requires teachers, support staff and even some volunteers working at Texas public and charter schools to submit their fingerprints for a national criminal history check.
“With this system, we’ll not only know about their past history, we’ll get an immediate notification if any new offenses occur,” said Debbie Ratcliffe, communications director for the Texas Education Agency.
Starting this year and continuing through Sept. 1, 2011, the Texas Education Agency will randomly select districts to be fingerprinted.
Southeast Texas school districts will not know when their turn comes until about three weeks before the fingerprinting equipment arrives, Ratcliffe said. This element of surprise is designed to catch anyone who would try to dodge the background check.
The fingerprinting is nothing new for educators certified since late 2003, but it will affect those certified before that time including support staff such as bus drivers, cafeteria workers and custodians.
The fingerprinting will allow districts to conduct national background checks as opposed to state criminal background checks alone, according to information provided by the Texas Education Agency.
The bill immediately targets anyone with a criminal record that includes homicide, kidnapping, sexual or assault-related offenses, among other crimes. These individuals will be immediately fired or, if applicants, unable to be hired.
Also, a registered sex offender or an offender whose victim was under the age of 18 or a student at the time of the crime cannot be hired or, if already employed, will be fired.
These standards set by the Texas Education Code offer guidance for serious offenses, but the gray area comes when an offense does not fall under crimes listed in the code.
At that point it will go beyond TEA authority, so local officials will make the call, Ratcliffe said.
“I think the hard calls are going to involve the offenses which occurred decades ago,” she said.
Ratcliffe said the process will be monitored closely at Austin Independent School District, the first district to be fingerprinted, in order to work out any kinks in the system before moving on to the other 1200 districts and charter schools in the state.
By: Emily Guevara