Check finds no offenders at TC schools

But officials cautious about releasing data

By CHRISTINE FINGER
Record-Eagle staff writer
TRAVERSE CITY - A statewide background check didn't turn up any convicted sex offenders working for Traverse City Area Public Schools, but district officials are cautious about disclosing the full results.
The state reports, sent last week to school districts, are part of new laws that went into effect Jan. 1 and aim to keep sex offenders out of schools. Michigan State Police ran background checks on about 200,000 current school employees statewide.
Christine Davis, TCAPS human resources director, said results received Monday showed none of the district's 2,000 employees had convictions for sex offenses, for which state law would require immediate termination.
But TCAPS, like other districts around the state, discovered inaccurate information on the initial list.
"I'm confident that when we get the list to a point where it is accurate, it will be a much more usable document," she said.
Davis said she found numerous misdemeanor criminal convictions inaccurately assigned to district employees. She is contacting the affected employees, running another criminal record check through state police and relaying that information to the state department of education so officials there can correct the list.
The new state laws, dubbed the Student Safety Initiative, require criminal background checks on all school employees, including teachers, administrators, janitors, cafeteria workers and paraprofessionals.
The legislation dictates that districts fire any employee convicted of a sex offense and requires employees with other felony and some misdemeanor convictions to get written permission from their superintendents and school boards to continue their jobs.
Davis said TCAPS in 1994 began running criminal background checks on all incoming teachers, administrators and other non-certified staff, as well as volunteers working in the district.
The Michigan Education Association cited inaccuracies in persuading a judge last week to issue a temporary order preventing the state from releasing results to the public. But the state released the results to local districts.
Davis predicted TCAPS will publicly report the results once accuracy is ensured.
"I think it will be very good news," she said.
Tim Bolles, manager of the Michigan State Police identification and criminal history section, said cross-checking the Department of Education's school employee list and the state police criminal database yielded some "false positives" because of misused Social Security numbers or common name matches.
The data-to-data searches will be replaced by more accurate fingerprint matching when all employees are required to be fingerprinted starting in 2008, he said.
Alison Burns, a parent at Central Grade School, said the results are important to ensure students' safety, but TCAPS doesn't necessarily need to publish the list.
"I would expect the district and law enforcement to take appropriate action," Burns said.

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