The Department of Education in Hawaii hopes to expand its current policy requiring criminal background checks of employees to also encompass student teachers, subcontractors and service providers for the public schools. This proposed legislation is currently being prepared for the upcoming legislative session that opens tomorrow.

The proposal was prompted in part by a reveling audit performed in September of 2006, which exposed the laxity of a local high school’s background screening policy. Kailua High School had hired a convicted murderer for a coaching position for the 2005-06 school year. His background was not checked until the audit was performed, three months after his hiring date.

Currently Hawaii State law does allow the DOE to perform criminal background checks on student teachers or subcontractors, which, according to the DOE “raises concerns regarding the health, safety and well-being of children”. Furthermore, The DOE feels that the new legislation will “filter out potentially unsuitable providers, subcontractors and Institute of Higher Education trainees.”

As Donald Young, interim dean for the College of Education at the University of Hawaii-Manoa, states, “It’s hard to argue it’s an invasion of privacy when you’re talking about things that have occurred in schools across the country…This is certainly making kids safer.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 16th, 2007 at 6:00 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.