Ohio Teachers Awaiting Background Checks
Many Ohio school workers will be returning to school this year without undergoing background checks.
The state has been inundated with a high number of background checks this year, and decided fingerprints for school workers won’t have to be submitted until Sept. 5, following the start of school in many districts.
The backup in checks is expected to mean a longer waiting period before the Ohio Department of Education can examine all the results, according to an article by The Columbus Dispatch. The Department plans to focus on checking new hires before it checks longtime workers.
The law requires all school workers be fingerprinted for state and federal background checks. However, many educators with permanent or eight-year licenses have not undergone background checks yet. Some school districts tried to have employees checked by May or June, but their efforts have been affected by the large volume of checks.
“I wish I could give 100 percent certainty,” Jim Miller, who oversees licensure and educator discipline for the ODE, said in the aritlce. “They’ve been in these school districts for 20 years-they’re good people. I’m predicting about 2 percent of the people may have something (in their criminal histories). A lot of them are going to be old things from the ’70s and ’80s-an old DUI or something like that.”
It is expected most records won’t be investigated by OED’s professional-conduct bureau until mid-September. Employees who can’t prove they’ve sent fingerprints to the state will have their licenses deactivated by the OED, and any unlicensed workers will be dealt with at the school level.
As of July, 12,000 school workers received notice their background check results hadn’t been received yet. More than 650 Franklin County workers and 350 workers in Columbus received notices.
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