Despite Bumpy Beginning, Districts Start Fingerprinting Process

Particularly not Doug Phillips, director of investigations and fingerprinting for the Texas Education Agency. As S.B. 9, the so-called fingerprinting bill, was drafted by state legislators, Phillips told them that getting an effort to fingerprint educators and newly hired school support employees off the ground by Jan. 2 would be a challenge.

The Legislature persisted, and on Jan. 2, Phillips and the few school districts in session around the state got their first glimpse at just how the process was working. With no time to test the system and two state agencies and a private vendor responsible for separate pieces of the puzzle, it was a rough start, to say the least. “Pretty much anything that can go wrong did go wrong,” said Phillips.

As school administrators returned for the spring semester, many were forced to delay the hiring of noncertified employees because they couldn’t get candidates through the fingerprint process. The Texas Education Agency (TEA), the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), and the vendor DPS had contracted with to conduct the fingerprinting, all scrambled to iron out technical and scheduling problems that were bogging the process down.

Working the bugs out

Initially, districts would upload job candidate information to TEA but weren’t able to get the document TEA issues to get the process started, the FAST Fingerprint Pass, either because their data upload was rejected or because the system itself wasn’t working. Without a FAST Pass, a job candidate can’t make a fingerprinting appointment with DPS’ vendor, L1 Identity Solutions. Within a week, TEA’s Information Technology department had resolved that problem and was issuing passes to districts with waiting job candidates.

Once candidates had their FAST Passes in hand, how to pay DPS the $50 per-person fee became the hot issue. DPS initially said districts or job candidates would have to pay with a credit card but reversed course on that quickly when it discovered the vendors’ credit card payment system wasn’t ready, requiring districts to pay by check instead. Some districts were allowed to set up prepaid accounts with DPS to cover fingerprinting costs, only to be told later that the accounts would not be allowed, either.

Getting timely appointments was also a problem. Some of L1s locations had limited hours so the earliest available appointment times were two weeks out. Others were so overwhelmed with the demand they stopped scheduling appointments. The long waits and scheduling hassles drew heckles from HR administrators who needed to fill critical support staff vacancies. S.B. 9 prohibits noncertified new hires from starting work with a district before being fingerprinted.

School district HR administrators will be happy to note that as of the third week of January, DPS had addressed billing and scheduling problems.

Districts should not have a problem paying for fingerprinting at this point. At the end of January, L1 was accepting district checks, setting up billing accounts, and reported that districts could use credit cards to pay when they set up appointments (credit cards are not accepted at vendor sites).  

Things have also simmered down on the appointment front for the vast majority of districts. At DPS’ request, L1 improved districts’ odds of getting appointments by increasing the hours at some of its locations around the state and setting up additional sites to meet the heavy demand. Phillips is working with DPS to get more vendor locations up and running to accommodate Dallas- and Houston-area districts. Districts that still have long waits (more than five days) can contact the DPS Crime Records Division office for assistance.

In the midst of all the controversy, Phillips was taking calls from and meeting with school HR administrators around the state to hear their concerns and keep them up to date. The calls are leveling off but the office will continue to communicate with districts as the need arises. If you have questions or concerns about the fingerprinting process or just want to keep informed, send e-mail to the following address: SB9@tea.state.tx.us. The office is building its own mailing list to get essential information out to administrators quickly.

In addition, both the State Board of Educator Certification (TEA’s credentialing arm) and DPS have posted extensive information on the fingerprinting process on their respective Web sites.

HR administrators with questions about the fingerprinting process for certified employees can breathe a little easier: Austin ISD is blazing that trail with TEA and DPS, working out the kinks for other districts. Also, TEA will provide training to assist HR administrators whose districts are next in line.

Unresolved issues

Districts that use independent contractors to provide services had more questions than answers as the fingerprinting process started. The rules governing how districts should handle independent contractors are still in the development stage.

We do know this: the law specifies that employees of contractors that have direct contact with students (i.e., cafeteria workers, bus drivers, or janitors) and were hired after Jan. 1, 2008, must undergo a fingerprint check. District questions have focused on how far to extend this provision. Should a day laborer who’s putting in landscaping be fingerprinted? What about a physical therapist?

TASB Legal Services advises that any new hire who has contact with students and performs a duty that would otherwise be performed by a school employee should be fingerprinted. The day laborer won’t have contact with children in the course of the work, so no fingerprint check is needed. A physical therapist will treat children, so the therapist needs to be fingerprinted.

Another area of confusion was who bears the responsibility for conducting checks on contract employees—the school district or the contractor? Contractors must contact DPS directly to get authorization to run background checks on their new hires. A contractor must also certify to the district that the fingerprint check has been done.

The law doesn’t spell out what contractors should do to notify districts in the event that an employee has a criminal history. Districts should make it a point to ask contractors whether any of the contract employees working in their schools have criminal records and should ask to view the criminal records of any that do. In the future, districts can stipulate in their contracts that they be given access to any criminal records of contract employees who work in the schools.

Districts and contractors should be aware that there are limits to who can be fingerprinted. Because DPS records are confidential, only contract employees that fall under the mandatory-check requirements should go through the process. Districts can screen contract employees that work in schools but don’t have contact with children as campus visitors, if they so choose.

Footing the bill

While the state will pay the $50 cost for fingerprint checks for certified employees, districts were left to decide for themselves whether to pay the cost for noncertified employees or pass it on. Districts that already have a hard time competing with other local businesses for hourly workers were understandably concerned that asking hourly workers—those who can least afford it—to pay the cost would be a drain on their candidate pools.

Some districts are biting the bullet and paying cost. At least for now, the majority of districts seem to be passing the cost on to hourly employees. Many are doing it through payroll deduction to lessen the bite out of the employee’s initial paycheck.

Others have decided to pay the cost for hourly employees who elect to stay with the district for a significant period of time. For example, one district will pay for hourly employees who remain with the district for a year, but employees who leave before the year is up will have the cost of fingerprinting deducted from their last paycheck.

Still other districts have elected to pay even more up front to control the timing of the process. They’ve decided to spend $24,000 to purchase digital fingerprinting machines from L1 so they can fingerprint job applicants in house. When you do it yourself there’s with no competition for appointments or significant travel required.

Plano ISD is one district that already has a machine on order. Tamira Griffin, Plano ISD’s executive director for HR, said that Plano applicants currently have to make an appointment and travel to another city to go through the process. It’s an additional hurdle in terms of hiring—one that could eliminate some applicants who have other job opportunities waiting.

The district won’t save much on the overall cost of fingerprint checks by buying the equipment, but Griffin says the ability to expedite the process will make the investment worthwhile. “We hope that it will help us in terms of convenience to our applicants,” Griffin said. “We want to make it as easy as possible for people to do business with the Plano Independent School District.”