More than 160 Texas school districts have now gone through the process of fingerprinting all of their certified employees plus all noncertified employees hired after Jan. 1, 2008.
A year into it, complaints about the process or the vendor doing the fingerprinting for the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) are rare. Austin ISD was the first district to fingerprint its employees and worked closely with officials at the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and DPS to iron out the early problems.
With things running smoothly, Doug Phillips, director of investigations and fingerprinting for TEA, says the process is on or a little ahead of schedule to meet the law’s Sept. 1, 2011, deadline. Phillips anticipates a big push this spring and summer that will bring the total number of school districts that have successfully navigated the process to more than 500 by summer’s end.
Phillips offered the following statistics about the process thus far:
Given the number of employees and applicants with criminal records, Phillips is confident the process is making a difference. “I think it’s rather easy to argue, especially when it comes to noncertified applicants, that at the very least there has been a reduction in the potential threat to the schoolchildren of Texas,” Phillips said.
Going through the process also puts district leaders at ease. “[They] feel a lot better knowing who they have working for them and how that relates to at least a perception of decreasing the threat to their children,” Phillips said.
