School Council Members To Undergo Background Check In Kentucky June 26, 2009 at 12:37 pm
There’s a wide public discussion of the new Kentucky law coming in effect starting 1-st July. This new background check law will in part mandate criminal background check on any parent elected to school on-site council within the jurisdiction. The idea to develop the said law was triggered by a known incident in Simpson County, when a candidate for the election to the on-site decision making council of one school turned out a registered sex offender. This was discovered merely by chance, when someone was looking through public records that are freely available online for public scrutiny. The sex offender registries and web based lists belong exactly to that type of public records. 
The incident then raised worries among many parents, for it suddenly became clear that there was no any sort of legally adopted background history screening procedure for positions like an elected on-site school council parent member. Contrary to school boards, everybody could have been elected to the school counsels – you didn’t even have to be the citizen of the state of Kentucky. Now with the new law coming in effect, criminal background screening will be mandatory for any member of an on-site council, which is a public body.
It is required that a member has no record of criminal offences of certain types of crime, including violent crimes and generally any crime directed against minor. Once elected, the parent who run for a seat, will be required to submit to both statewide and nationwide fingerprint background check that is believed to be the sole type of background check that is capable to produce accurate results concerning a person’s background.
The new law clearly defines that once elected; a parent can start working in a council while waiting for the results of his/her background check to arrive. This seemingly controversial provision has explanation, though. If we look back to 2000, when the then law mandating criminal background check on school volunteers had been put into effect, there occurred a large backlog that put many schools in desperate situation. Meant to protect schoolchildren from volunteers with criminal records, instead the 2000 law left schools in Jefferson County with no option other than just canceling volunteer-dependent events for the whole period of several months – only because of having to wait for the results of those checks to arrive.
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