A fair check

The State Office of Education wants to charge teachers $65 for a fingerprint background check every five years when they renew their licenses. It's an easy call that background checks are essential to keeping children safe in school. But the cost should be fair to teachers, who already spend amounts of money all out of proportion to their salaries to get their licenses and keep up on the education they need to stay qualified.

In Utah, nurses, massage therapists, pharmacists and armed security officers pay $35 for a fingerprint file search or background check as part of their initial licensing fees and are not required to have a renewal check. Teachers pay a $69 fingerprint check fee when they're licensed or if their license lapses. A proposed rule would require a background check when a teacher renews a license every five years at a cost to the teacher of $65.

According to recent cross-checking, there are already too many teachers and other school employees currently working in Utah schools who have been convicted of serious crimes. Obviously, depending on those employees to 'fess up when they tangle with the law is not a successful policy.

An audit conducted in April by the state Office of the Legislative Auditor General sampled 1,209 of approximately 60,000 Utah school employees and found 17 with criminal convictions. The audit revealed that four teachers and 13 nonlicensed employees -- custodians, cafeteria workers, aides, clerical staff

-- had committed serious crimes before they were hired or since. Offenses ranged from assault and drug possession to criminal trespass and solicitation of sex.

Such violations were also found by Tribune reporters who ran a computer comparison of 24,553 names of school employees in the Jordan, Salt Lake City and Granite districts against a court database of 1.32 million criminal cases over 11 years prior to 2009. The check found 854 matches. School officials refused to supply birth dates to reporters, but district officials found 53 of the names did, indeed, belong to current employees with criminal convictions.

The Legislature passed a law 10 years ago mandating that the Public Safety Department and the state education office work together to create a database funded by teacher fees and regularly update it with arrest records, but the mandate "fell through the cracks," according to the Bureau of Criminal Identification.

To make sure no one with a criminal conviction escapes notice again, the state education office should approve the background checks, but take care not to charge more than the actual cost.