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Schools

Schools' vendors to pay tab for security

The Citrus County School District decides it can't afford to cover the cost of fingerprinting every contract employee working at schools.

By EDDY RAMIREZ
Published July 30, 2005

INVERNESS - Citrus schools won't foot the bill to fingerprint thousands of contract employees who are required to undergo full background checks under a provision of the Jessica Lunsford Act.

Instead, the district plans to send letters to vendors saying they will have to pay the $61 fingerprinting fee for each employee. The district has identified at least 1,500 companies that have done business with Citrus schools in the last year. It's unclear the number of people working for those companies who would have to submit to the screenings.

But even if those companies agree to screen their employees, school officials acknowledge that in the long run the companies will pass the costs on to the district in the form of steeper prices for goods and services they provide.

"It's killing us," superintendent Sam Himmel said of what she called a massive undertaking to comply with the law, which goes into effect Sept. 1.

State lawmakers passed the Lunsford Act in the spring after the arrest of John Couey, who was charged with kidnapping, sexually assaulting and killing third-grader Jessica Lunsford. Couey, a convicted sex offender, worked briefly as a mason's helper at Homosassa Elementary, the same school Jessica attended. Officials say the two never met on school grounds.

Designed to tighten control of sex offenders, the act bars individuals with crimes of "moral turpitude" from entering school grounds and states that "noninstructional school district employees or contractual personnel who are permitted access on school grounds when students are present" must meet screening requirements that include fingerprinting and a state and federal criminal background check.

School district officials say that they support the premise of the law but that they're confused about who is subject to the screenings and who isn't. Besides construction workers, the list includes delivery workers, referees and even people who sell class rings and graduation gowns.

For a while, school officials worried that parents who act as volunteers or chaperones might be included in the list. But barring a direct order from the Legislature, school district officials said this week that they plan to put parents and community residents through a separate screening. Between 200 and 300 people volunteer each year.

Already, a separate state statute, which went into effect in 2004, requires school districts to fingerprint every district employee and resubmit each print to the FBI every five years for a national arrest search. Citrus schools employ 2,200 people, and the estimated cost over four years will be $134,000.

Districts also must perform statewide criminal background checks on volunteers who work unsupervised with children and must check all volunteers against the statewide sex offender database. The district now performs those checks at its own expense.

Steve Myers, the district's risk management and employee relations director, said the cost of fingerprinting vendor employees, teachers and volunteers would simply have been too much for the district alone to absorb. The Lunsford Act does not provide school districts with funding to pay for the background checks.

Myers said no date has been set for when all contract employees must be screened. But he said the district wants those workers who spent considerable time on campus to be screened first. Among them are construction workers who will be present at several school sites when students return to class Aug. 10, including crews at Homosassa Elementary and those working to build the new Renaissance Center at the Lecanto complex.

District officials have asked the Citrus County Sheriff's Office to help run background checks on contract employees. The employee would pay the $61 fee and the Sheriff's Office might levy a charge to the district for making their fingerprinting machines and personnel available. The district would handle the fingerprinting of teachers and volunteers.

Another idea to speed up the process is to spread the responsibilities with a coalition of neighboring school districts in Hernando, Sumter, Levy and Marion counties.

By working as a cohort, each district would be responsible for screening and keeping tabs on a certain number of vendors, said Steve Richardson, the district's personnel director. A district responsible for screening the Xerox deliveryman, for example, would inform the other districts if that person cleared the background check, saving the other counties money and hassle. That same district also would be responsible for notifying the others if an employee who already passed the screening is subsequently convicted or charged with a crime.

But getting school districts to work together might present its set of challenges, Richardson said.

A disproportionate amount of the burden might fall on the district that becomes responsible for screening a major vendor such as Coca-Cola distributors. That district might have to purchase additional screening machines and supply more manpower than others. In such a scenario, Richardson said he envisions all districts would share the costs.

Another challenge might arise if school districts disagree about which offenses fall under "moral turpitude." The Lunsford Act leaves much of the decision up to officials at each school district.

"We are like a dog chasing his tail trying to figure this all out," Richardson said.

Like Citrus, other school districts are scrambling to comply. In Hillsborough County, where an unusually high number of school campuses are slated for construction, district officials have said they likely won't meet the Sept. 1 deadline.

While school officials await for clearer direction from Tallahassee, some school officials are questioning whether the requirements imposed by the Lunsford Act will really make students safer.

In a recent interview, Pat Deutschman, School Board chairwoman, criticized state legislators for rushing to pass a law that she said did not include advice from school districts.

She does not know of a child who was ever harmed by a sex offender at a school, she said.

Himmel said she worries that the law creates a false sense of security for parents.

"We can't fingerprint the sexual predator who is hanging over the fence eyeing a child," she said.

Himmel said the district plans to make a "good faith effort" to comply with the law.

Eddy Ramirez can be reached at eramirez@sptimes.com or 860-7305.

[Last modified July 30, 2005, 01:09:17]