A call for tougher checks of school staff

Nearly every day, Tina Tranauskas sees more and more need to require stronger employee background checks for people who work in schools.

Her latest case in point: Arnesx Honore, an eighth-grade math teacher at a Philadelphia disciplinary school who wound up on the city's most-wanted list last month.

If a tough new bill Tranauskas is advocating in Harrisburg had been law, the school would have been notified immediately when Honore was charged last year with raping a 14-year-old girl, she said.

"I know that because the loopholes are so large, there are people who are getting through them," said Tranauska, a public-school parent from upper Bucks County who doubles as executive director of the nonprofit PA School Watch.

The bill she's pushing, sponsored by State Sen. Robert C. Wonderling (R., Montgomery), would prohibit anyone convicted of a serious crime from working in schools and would close the gaping loopholes that set Pennsylvania apart from New Jersey, which requires greater reporting and more extensive fingerprinting of school employees.

Wonderling's bill would also require annual fingerprinting for all those working near children. It would require the fingerprints to be kept in a database and would compel law enforcement agencies to notify administrators whenever school personnel are charged with crimes.

In such cases, Tranauska said, administrators would decide whether employees charged with crimes could remain at school, pending the outcome of their cases.

Under current law, school employees, student teachers, and outside vendors working in schools who were hired before April 1, 2007, are not required to be fingerprinted. The fingerprints of new and prospective employees are not kept, and law enforcement agencies are not required to notify schools of employee arrests.

Furthermore, employees who have remained with the same district or private school since 1985 have never had background checks. Even those convicted of such crimes as aggravated assault, rape and homicide can apply to schools five years after their convictions.

"Parents are absolutely shocked that this is the system they're trusting," Tranauskas said. "Anyone who works with children should have a safe history."

Without closing the loopholes, Pennsylvania lawmakers made some changes in 2006 to the school background-check law that took effect in April 1. All prospective employees working in or around schools are now required to pass state criminal and child-abuse clearances and be fingerprinted to obtain a national FBI criminal clearance. The fingerpint requirement applies only to a narrow subset of current school employees, those who have lived in the state for less than two years.

Tranauskas, who was not involved with that legislation, said the bill did not go far enough because it exempts nearly all current school employees.

In New Jersey, since 1998, all new school employees must be fingerprinted as part of the application process. The law does not cover those hired before that time or mandate annual checks. But New Jersey saves fingerprints in the state police database and notifies districts of arrests. New Jersey also bars anyone convicted of a violent crime or selling drugs from working in schools.

Though Pennsylvania's fingerprinting requirement took effect only on April 1, the state Department of Education already has processed more than 125,000 FBI background checks, according to a department spokeswoman.

Prospective employees pay $40 for fingerprinting and the criminal background check.

The state uses a California firm, Cogent Systems Inc., which specializes in biometric fingerprinting, which scans fingerprints and requires no ink.

Pedro Rivera, who oversees employee entry for the district, said a trained staffer uses a scanner to fingerprint 25 to 30 people a day.

"Basically, if you are in a position where you will see a child, you must have all clearances," Rivera said.

Sean A. Fields, associate counsel for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association in Mechanicsburg, said it was too soon to gauge the effectiveness of the fingerprinting program. But he said there were still gaps in the background-check law because the fingerprinting requirement largely affects only prospective employees.

"What it doesn't address is what happens when a teacher or school employee happens to commit a crime while working for a district," he said. "It's not clear from the current law whether . . . a district would be able to run a check on someone."

The association, Fields said, supports requiring law enforcement agencies to notify schools if they are aware of employees being charged or convicted of serious crimes, as well as requiring employees to tell superiors if they are charged.

But instead of annual background checks, the school boards association prefers giving districts authority to make "periodic" checks.

"I don't know we will ever get to zero errors," Fields said. "But legislation we can get to tighten requirements and help protect kids - while making sure we don't overstep our authority as school districts - would be helpful."

A bill introduced by State Sen. Jeffrey Piccola (R., Dauphin) would allow districts to ask an employee to submit a current criminal history if there is reason to believe he or she has been convicted of an offense.

Though not as far-reachng as the Wonderling bill that Tranauskas favors, Piccola's proposal would require school employees to inform an administrator if they have been charged or convicted of a crime. And it would prohibit from working in schools anyone who has been convicted of a serious offense, including drug dealing and sexual assault.

The Piccola and Wonderling bills are in the Senate Education Committee and staffers say it could be acted on this spring.

The Pennsylvania State Education Association, the state's largest teachers union, opposes annual background checks and fingerprinting.

"We think the current system is adequate," spokesman Wythe Keever said.

Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, also has reservations about the proposals.

"I think it's very important for schools to be safe places for kids," Jordan said. "But the devil is in the details."

He called the Wonderling bill an "overreaction" to a problem caused by a small number of "bad eggs."

Jordan added: "It's unfair to make the assumption that the majority of school district employees are people who have criminal records."

In the recent case of the math teacher on Philadelphia's most-wanted list, Honore had been teaching at Community Education Partner's Hunting Park campus since 2003. Because the Tennessee company does annual background checks of its employees, Community Partners knew that Honore, 32, had been arrested in August 2006 and charged with rape and related offenses. But the records showed the charges were withdrawn in June 2007.

Community Partners officials said they did not know the charges were refiled a month later and didn't realize the case involved a minor.

After learning Feb. 10 that Honore's photo was on the city's most-wanted list, Community Partners suspended him and called police. He has since lost his job.

Two weeks ago, the rape charge against Honore was dropped during a hearing. His arraignment on remaining charges, including statutory sexual assault and corruption of a minor, is scheduled for March 12.

Go to http://go.philly.com/checks for links to legislation regarding background checks of school personnel, and read about current requirements at the state and Philadelphia levels. EndText