Roll Call: School districts must follow stringent background checks when considering potential employees

A Downers Grove South High School teacher recently was accused of having an inappropriate sexual relationship with a student, prosecutors said.

The staff member was a teacher and soccer coach. No doubt she violated the teacher/student trust put in all faculty members hired in school districts across America.

The teacher has pleaded not guilty to sexually abusing and sexually assaulting the student.

I thought this would be a good time to review what are referred to as employment background checks required before anyone gets in a position of authority, especially if they have access to children.

I am familiar with the process as the police department I led conducted hundreds of background investigations for potential police officers on our eligibility list. Typically, background investigations are one of the last things done before employment. But I believe they should be one of the first things and they should be done with precision.

Teachers are entrusted with the safety of the children they oversee. The teacher background check helps ensure that the candidates are fully qualified and have the moral character needed to perform the job. Any school district that fails to perform a proper teaching background investigation has the potential to hire unfit and unqualified teachers, potentially placing children at risk.

Illinois has mandatory requirements for background investigations for teachers. But I am a proponent of school districts performing background checks on vendors that enter the school. Vendors that come to the school to service HVAC, the pool or provide routine services should be contacted and the employees assigned to that school should be vetted.

It is also important that the school districts conduct nationwide criminal background checks.

These days, most schools will outsource background investigations to a private company. However, districts should ensure they do background checks nationwide because teachers may have lived in other states.

Districts also should make sure that the employees reviewing the background investigations know how to read a criminal history, which are flooded with codes, lingo and other information that is hard to read unless you have been in law enforcement and had training.

By law, all teachers must be fingerprinted, but it is essential that those fingerprint checks not only go to the database in Illinois but also go to the National Crime Information Center, where any arrest or conviction throughout the U.S. will be listed.

There also is a distinct difference between an arrest and a conviction. However, I believe that school districts should have all information when they are considering a candidate for employment.

Background checks for school employees also should be based on fingerprints and should never be what is referred to as a name-based criminal history check. Fingerprint records are the only proper way to identify someone’s criminal history. In Illinois, schools also must check the statewide sex offender database and the statewide murder and violent offender database and contact DCSF for any open or pending investigations that may prevent a potential employee from being employed by a school district.

In Illinois, the school code does not require school districts to conduct background checks for volunteers such as parent chaperons. I am a strong proponent that volunteers should go through the same background investigation. While not law, conducting complete background investigations every five years on employees is a good idea.

Law enforcement routinely does this for one reason: individuals travel throughout the country. They go on vacation, visit family members or even leave the country. Sometimes, individuals are arrested outside the state of Illinois and the incident will not be reported to their employer.

That arrest would appear in the National Crime Information Center’s fingerprint database. So I believe that every five years employees should go through a complete background investigation.

Finally, I can tell you that almost all school districts comply with these types of backgrounds checks. The liability associated with not doing so is too high. Yet despite these expensive background investigations, school districts, like other employers, sometimes hire bad employees.

One final way to ensure that the highest-standard employees are hired is to ensure they are mentored, have some probation period – even a training period where they are shadowed – and receive written evaluations from supervisors who observe them in person.

Finally, any anonymous complaint about a teacher or staff member should be investigated thoughtfully and thoroughly. This is routinely done in law enforcement. While some do not believe that anonymous complaints should be investigated, I am not in that camp. Many individuals do not want to come forward with their name or information, but the information they give to administrative staff is factual. In the world we live in today, anonymous complaints against individuals who hold positions of authority over children should be thoroughly investigated.

• Tom Weitzel was chief of the Riverside Police Department. Follow him @chiefweitzel.