Editorial: Database is too limited

Friday, May 28, 2004 | 8:45 a.m.

Each year the Clark County School District has to hire about 2,000 new teachers just to keep up with the area's rapid growth. Because the state can't produce enough teachers to keep pace with this demand, about 70 percent of those hired come from outside of Nevada. Not only is it tough to convince teachers to relocate to another state, but hiring people from far away also makes it that much more difficult to get a handle on the backgrounds of the candidates. The school district, in addition to verifying an individual's teaching qualifications, also is concerned about whether a teacher could endanger children, such as sexually abusing them. Sixteen Clark County School District employees, in the past three years alone, have been arrested and charged with sex-related offenses (although it should be noted that none of those individuals had criminal records at the time they were hired).

There is a place that the school district can turn to and get more information about a teaching candidate. The National Crime Prevention and Privacy Compact of 1998 created a database for states to share criminal records to be used in pre-employment reviews. This allows school districts to check the FBI's database to see whether a teacher that they are considering hiring has a criminal background. There is, however, a serious shortcoming to this worthy database -- only 21 states, including Nevada, belong. Some of the largest states, which also would have the largest pool of candidates, such as California and Texas, don't belong, exacerbating the problem.

It is encouraging, however, that Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., at the request of George Ann Rice, associate superintendent of human resources at the school district, has introduced legislation that would seek to make this a genuine national database. Porter's bill would require all states to share these records unless they wanted to risk losing federal education funding. We realize that time is running short in Congress, and that not much gets done in an election year, but this is the kind of legislation that we hope would get a fair hearing. A criminal history database, in which all states participate, would give schools that extra tool to make the classrooms safer for their students.