Audit: Michigan Department of Education poorly monitored school worker background checks

Paul Egan and David Panian, The Monroe News
·3 min read

LANSING — The Michigan Department of Education has done a poor job of ensuring contracted school employees are fingerprinted and monitored for criminal convictions, resulting in a potential threat to child safety, according to an audit released Tuesday.

The audit's findings led state Sen. Joe Bellino, R-Monroe, to call for "immediate action."

Bellino
Bellino

“The department’s failure to make sure schools are protecting kids is absolutely despicable and completely unacceptable,” Bellino said in a news release. “The safety and security of students should always be a top priority, and immediate action is needed to ensure the state meets its oversight responsibility to protect Michigan students as schools prepare for the next school year.”

Michigan school districts employ thousands of workers under contract. Many work as substitute teachers or as custodians, maintenance workers, or food service workers. All require FBI background checks through the Michigan State Police prior to hiring, plus ongoing monitoring of new criminal convictions post-hiring. School districts are prohibited from hiring sex offenders and must get written approval from school boards to hire anyone with any other type of felony conviction.

The report from Auditor General Doug Ringler says the department:

  • Did a poor job of monitoring what school districts were doing to ensure compliance;

  • Used sometimes unreliable information to determine whether someone was employed with a school district;

  • Didn't always notify school districts when it learned of convictions, and

  • Sometimes removed employees from criminal monitoring prematurely.

The department agreed with some of the findings and recommendations, while pushing back on others.

The auditor general looked at 5,010 contracted employees in 41 sampled school districts and estimated that 220, or 4%, were never fingerprinted prior to hiring.

The department did not always inform school districts when it was notified a contracted employee had been convicted of a crime, as required by law, the audit found. In a sample of 16 contracted staff for which the department received notice of a criminal conviction, the department did not notify the school district in two, or 13%, of those cases, the report said.

In its response, the Department of Education said it would step up oversight "in the interest of ensuring the safety of students," while at the same time denying it is responsible for overseeing fingerprinting and monitoring. The department pointed to wording in the fingerprinting law that said the process "requires coordination among the applicant, the district's school board, and the department of state police," with no involvement by the department.

But the auditor pointed out that another section of state law instructs the department to "require each school district to observe the laws relating to schools."

Although the audit focused solely on contracted school workers, the auditor said the same problems likely exist with respect to fingerprinting and criminal monitoring of employees who work directly for school districts. Laws surrounding school fingerprinting may need to be improved, the auditor added. For example, criminal background checks conducted prior to hiring include federal and out-of-state convictions, but post-hiring updates include only Michigan state court convictions.

Martin Ackley, a spokesman for the department, said officials will discuss with the Legislature the auditor general's recommendation that local school districts report employment changes more frequently.

"It is the utmost priority of the Michigan Department of Education that students are safe and secure, and it relies on its partners to achieve that goal," Ackley said in an email.

"School districts should not be hiring individuals whose criminal history demonstrates the potential to jeopardize the safety of children and other school staff."

This article originally appeared on The Monroe News: Audit: Michigan Department of Ed poorly monitored background checks