Boulder Schools Beef Up Background Checks

Giving thought to performing volunteer work for your local school district? Well, if you happen to live in Colorado and you’re considering putting in some volunteer time with the Boulder Valley School District, be ready to for a background screening. Channel 9 News in Colorado reports that the school district is revamping its hiring process to keep with the times.

With almost 2,000 people volunteering their time to work in one of the district’s 55 schools, officials have made the decision to reinforce existing volunteer hiring policies with mandatory background checks.

Becky McClure, who functions as Assistant Superintendant of Human Resources, thinks there should be no difference between full time staff and the districts pool of volunteer workers: “With volunteers they are working with our children just like our employees are, so we want to be consistent.”

So far the background checks haven’t turned up anything too bad, but according to McClure, “Some were on probation that we were needing to disallow them for. It depends on the type of offense the individual had. Certainly a child abuse offense, a domestic violence offense would be a certain cause for concern.”

Although similar policies have been in effect in other districts, the difference is that the volunteers in other school districts must pay for the cost of the background check out of their own pocket. However, Boulder Valley has set aside $25,000 of its annual budget to cover the cost of the checks for all prospective volunteers as well as full time district employees. McClure hasn’t considering passing the cost along just yet but “We would consider possibly…but it would just depend on what the cost would be.”

Hats off to the Boulder Valley School District for its sound decision! Obviously employment status has no impact on the importance of a background check, something that the district has acknowledged through its new policy implementation. Some may consider $25,000 a bit steep, but the monetary cost pales in comparison to no check at all resulting in a dangerous predator working with children.