School district wants applicants’ drug histories

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2002 | 11:05 a.m.

Clark County School District officials want Nevada lawmakers to grant them more access to job applicants' criminal histories of drug-related offenses -- a demand critics call an invasion of privacy for people who have already completed their court-ordered punishment.

Certain state licensing boards in Nevada are now granted full access to an applicant's history, including expunged drug offenses, but school districts are not. A bill draft proposed for the 2003 legislative session by the school district would change that.

Critics of the bill, including the state teachers' union and the American Civil Liberties Union, say such access to sealed records would be an invasion of privacy and would undercut the value of rehabilitation for first-time offenders.

"In the wisdom of the court some records are properly sealed," said Al Bellister, researcher of the Nevada Education Association, the state teachers' union. "A person who has completed their punishment or gone through treatment shouldn't be exposed to public scrutiny. They should be able to salvage their careers and go on with their lives."

Two prior versions of the bill have been proposed, but neither made it out of committee, Bellister said. If the current bill does move forward, it will find vigorous opposition from the teachers' union, he said.

"It's ludicrous that the school district would expect, or even want, to totally negate the court process in this way," said Bellister, who has testified against the earlier versions of the bill.

First-time drug offenders in many states -- including Nevada -- may have their record expunged by completing court-ordered penalties such as community service or a treatment program. In Nevada, people may withhold such information on job applications without perjuring themselves, according to state statute. However, state licensing boards must be told, and may consider the offense when evaluating an application for a license.

"We're saying we have a right to that information, too," said George Ann Rice, school district associate superintendent of human resources. "We're talking about people who will be working with children, and it's our job to maintain the trust and confidence of the public in our employees."

Knowing about a potential employee's prior drug convictions does not guarantee the person won't be hired, said Barbara Belak, director of employee labor management relations for the school district.

"We have had some occasions in the past when a person disclosed a prior drug arrest, sometimes as much as 25 years old, and we've gone ahead and hired them," Belak said. "But the way the current law is written, we're being robbed of the opportunity to make that judgment call for ourselves."

Rice said only a handful of teachers have been fired for drug-related offenses in recent years.

JoNell Thomas, a member of the board of directors of the Nevada American Civil Liberties Union, questioned the need for the proposed bill. There are professions where expunged or sealed records for drug offenses should be opened to licensing boards but teaching is not one of them, Thomas said.

"If we're talking about airplane pilots or train conductors, those are circumstances that could involve mass casualties and catastrophe," said Thomas, a criminal defense attorney practicing in Las Vegas. "But if we're talking about a teacher who's successfully been through a drug treatment program, what's the worst that could happen here?"

Keith Rheault, deputy superintendent of the Nevada Education Department, said the state's teaching licensing division sees fewer than 100 applicants out of 1,000 with drug-related offenses on their records.

In most of those instances, applicants checked "no" when asked on the application if they have drug-related convictions or cases pending, because a judge has told them their records have been wiped clean, Rheault said. However, the case still shows up on fingerprint reports from the FBI, Rheault said. When that happens, the superintendent has the discretion to grant or deny the individual's license. By law, the information cannot be shared with school districts, Rheault said.

"If we could, we would be happy to tell them everything we know," Rheault said.

Thomas said if someone must have access to the expunged records, it is better to have it be at the state, rather than the district, level. State officials would be more likely to view the information objectively, Thomas said.

Rheault said he knew of fewer than 10 cases of Nevada teachers being arrested for drug-related offenses, either here or out of state.

For the Nevada Board of Education, stemming the tide of sex-related offenses by teachers is a more immediate priority than investigating past drug records, Rheault said. During the past 24 months, 15 Clark County School District employees have been prosecuted on sexual crimes, ranging from possession of child pornography to child molestation to having sex with a student.

"It's the sexual offenses, not drug cases, that have really hit at this point," Rheault said. "We're looking at requiring full background checks, not just fingerprints."