This is the disturbing saga of Alioune Ndao.
His story illustrates how the Philadelphia School District and the Pennsylvania Education Department have not protected students as well as possible.
Federal immigration and District Court officials now know that Ndao is also the man known as Badara Ndaw, whom the school district contracted with to mediate student conflicts in an effort to reduce violence.
Under the name Badou Ndao, he pleaded guilty in 1992 in Delaware to a charge of unlawful sexual intercourse in the third degree in a case involving his 7-year-old stepdaughter. There is no indication in court documents that Ndao repeated that conduct with children in Philadelphia. But imagine what could have happened, since the district hired him without thoroughly searching his background.
What an unnecessary risk to students was posed by hiring Ndao to mediate student conflicts. What a careless way for the district to spend its precious dollars on one of its most chronic yet urgent problems: school violence.
Capitalizing on a false identity, and governmental languor and mistakes, Ndao created a company called Jolof Empire, whose mission according to its Web site is to provide "educational, cultural and business exchange services in and between Africa and America." The district was impressed enough to give him a contract - not knowing he had committed a sex crime; not knowing he spent two years of a 10-year sentence in prison; not knowing he was here illegally after having been deported to his native Senegal.
U.S. immigration officials were fooled by his new identity and false documents. So was the school district. A criminal background check was done, but it looked only for crimes committed in Pennsylvania and didn't consider that he had an alias.
Now, that's an example of a stupid policy: checking only for crimes committed within Pennsylvania when so many people commute to work in Philadelphia from New Jersey and Delaware.
So Jolof Empire mediated conflicts between African and African-American students, held forums, workshops, and one-on-one meetings with kids. The district no longer uses Jolof Empire, but it was the company's poor performance that cost it the contract.
Smaller enterprises do what the school district should have done to uncover the criminal record of Ndao and possibly others who still work in the district: fingerprint potential contractors and employees for use in a national criminal check.
District officials say fingerprinting was not done for most employees, including contractors, because the Pennsylvania Department of Education did not have that requirement.
Sheila Ballen of the state Education Department said it didn't require fingerprinting and a nationwide criminal check for school employees, including contractors in direct contact with kids, because neither the feds or the General Assembly mandated it until recently.
In other words, "No one told me to, so I didn't." That's what a child would say. You don't expect that from adults charged with protecting children.
No one should have needed to tell them to do something so obvious.
The school district could have required on its own that federal criminal checks be done as a matter of course. The Chicago school district has been doing that since 1997, when its CEO was current Philadelphia schools chief Paul Vallas.
The state's new background check policy will be much better after April 1, when all new employees in school districts throughout Pennsylvania must be fingerprinted and undergo a national criminal check. But a huge gap remains. Most employees hired before the new rule goes into effect won't be checked for crimes in other states, which means someone who committed a crime outside of Pennsylvania might continue working with kids. That's nuts. That needs to be changed.
This latest chapter in the saga of Alioune Ndao has ended as it should: A sharp immigration officer got Ndao to admit to his other identity last year. He is in federal detention and will be deported again.
The saga of bad policies won't end until city school and state education officials do what they ought to do to keep kids as safe as possible - even if no one above them requires it.