Testimony of Dr. William Dean
Superintendent
Frederick County Public Schools
Winchester, VA

Background Checks for Teachers:
HR 2649, Schools Safely Acquiring Faculty Excellence Act of 2003

Subcommittee on 21^st Century Competitiveness,
Committee on Education and the Workforce

September 28, 2004 

Good Morning Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to HR 2649. My name is Dr. William C. Dean and I am Superintendent of Schools in Frederick County, Virginia. This is my 7th year as Superintendent in Frederick County, my 18th year as a superintendent and my 42nd year in the profession.

In 1968, as a brand new high school principal in Michigan, I hired a Journalism teacher with impeccable credentials. Six weeks after school started the teacher’s photo appeared in the local paper. I was called by a local minister who said the teacher I hired – let’s call him Mr. Jones – had actually been married by this minister in Oregon using the name Mr. Smith. Mr. Jones, it turns out, was a bigamist and wanted in two states by local authorities.

The possibility of that happening 36 years later is slim - not impossible - but significantly less possible because of safeguards many states, including Virginia, have enacted.

In our local school district of nearly 12,000 students and 2,200 employees, we follow the Virginia code on background checks emphatically.

All employees are finger printed and using an electronic state system that has been merged with the FBI data base, we know within 30 minutes to 24 hours whether a potential employee has an arrest record in Virginia or most places in the United States. If the system finds a match, we are informed by e-mail that the "Record is being processed." This usually means that someone has an arrest record.

We process more than 500 a year, and perhaps 3% come back as "Record is being processed." The only error in the process is usually a candidate who embarrassingly confides they did not complete the application honestly. Two employees in our human resource office operate our system. The full-time equivalency of this task is approximately .25.

The Virginia State Police verify that not all states contribute to an interstate criminal record network. That not all states do not participate creates a dilemma for school districts in all states.

For example, most of us in northern Virginia travel to a dozen states to recruit staff for our growing student enrollment. It would be reassuring to know that the states where our candidates come from participate in a national criminal record network so that our background checks are completely, not partially, reliable.

While I agree with the intent and purpose of HR 2649, I question whether penalizing state departments of education by denying federal education dollars is the most appropriate way to accomplish this worthwhile legislation. As influential as state departments and state boards of education may be, their influence does not extend to directing state law enforcement to participate in a statewide compact of information sharing.

And while I think my colleagues in the superintendency and the boards of education who employ us would all feel better if HR 2649 were enacted, as school employees and elected officials, we also recognize our inability to compel law enforcement to accede to HR 2649’s requirements.

So, on closer examination, perhaps the U.S. Department of Education may be the wrong federal agency to enforce compliance with a well-intended piece of legislation.

HR 2649 is important to educators who are asked to ensure that children in the public schools are protected from criminals, whatever their crime. Let’s just be sure we use the right mechanisms to see this legislation to fruition.