Background checks on new teachers won’t be completed by fall

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Friday, June 27, 2003 | 11:20 a.m.

Delayed hiring caused by the budgetary impasse at the Legislature means the Clark County School District will be hiring teachers who haven't completed mandatory background checks with state and federal law enforcement agencies, a district official said this morning.

At the same time, a rigorous questionnaire sent to applicants and another sent to their former supervisors should help ensure that offers are not made to applicants with undesirable backgrounds, said George Ann Rice, associate superintendent of human resources for the district.

"Any information found to be false (on the questionnaires) after the background checks are completed is grounds for dismissal," Rice said.

In a normal year, the district begins making offers as early as November and expects to have between 800 and 1,000 new hires by May 1. The three-month process of checking the fingerprints of applicants is normally completed before the fall semester begins.

The checks are conducted by Nevada Highway Patrol and the FBI.

This year, only several hundred new teachers were hired by May 1, so some of the 462 applicants who have accepted offers will not have their checks completed until they are already on the job.

Another 181 applicants have been offered jobs but have yet to respond to the district, Rice said.

In addition, there are currently 437 vacancies, but if the Legislature settles on a budget that allow the district to move at least 350 specialists back into their former teaching positions, the number of vacancies will rise. The specialists were shifted to general teaching positions because of the overall shortage faced by the district.

The questionnaires sent to all potential applicants ask if they have ever been arrested and charged for various crimes, and if they have ever been investigated by employers.

The questionnaire sent to former supervisors ask similar questions, plus a question that asks if the teacher has ever entered into any settlement or agreement that would limit a supervisor's answers.

"If a teacher had been involved in an investigation and then resigned instead of continuing the investigation ... that's a red flag to us and the supervisor might not be telling the truth," Rice said.

In that case, the applicant would not be considered, she said.

Those that are hired under current conditions have the same contract as any other teacher in any other year, but their state licenses are provisional until the background checks are completed.