After conducting criminal background checks on more than 5,000 school board members and charter school trustees, the state Department of Education today announced it has disqualified 17 people from the volunteer positions because of criminal convictions.
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Another dozen school board members and trustees are ineligible to serve, because they did not comply with the background check process, state officials said.
The Department of Education in July began implementing a law requiring all school board members and charter school trustees to undergo criminal background checks, including fingerprinting. Last month, the department said as many as 186 of 5,159 board members would be ineligible because they did not complete the checks by the original Dec. 31 deadline.
The release of the list caused concern, however, with more than a dozen board members saying they had tried to comply, or had resigned earlier for various reasons.
The department extended the deadline to Jan. 27.
“We were very appreciative of the department doing that … the fact that it was down to a dozen is really significant,” said Frank Belluscio, spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association. He called the number of people deemed ineligible or disqualified a “tiny fraction” of the total.
State law requires confidentiality as to the nature of the offenses, said DOE spokeswoman Allison Kobus. But criminal record checks and interviews show that many of the offenses date back decades, and include offenses such as drug possession; resisting arrest, or other crimes that did not result in jail time. There is no time limit on the offenses.
Belluscio said he would like the law to include an appeal process.
“For instance, so the commissioner could consider the nature of the offense, how long ago it was committed and if the individual has shown a record of community service,” he said. “There are certain crimes that you would not want the individual to be serving in office. But there are other crimes that are in the distant past, or due to the indiscretion of youth.”
Members must register online and schedule fingerprinting with a private vendor who does checks for school district employees. All new school district teachers and volunteers were already required to have background checks.
Each background check costs $81.25. The volunteers pay the cost, but school boards can reimburse them, Kobus said.
Not all ask, however. One disqualified member — who said he volunteered to fill an empty board seat, but was bounced because ever serving due to a decades-old conviction for resisting arrest — said he did not ask for his $81.25 back.
Disqualified members can seek to have their records expunged, and seek their position again. Those deemed ineligible can run for election or seek reappointment if they complete the check.
The Rev. Reginald Jackson, chairman of the board for not-yet-open Arete Academy Charter School in Orange, said he is hoping that will happen for two of his board members.
His entire 10-member board was originally deemed ineligible. The final list still shows two members have not completed the background check _ but Jackson said their forms were rejected because they had identified themselves as board members instead of charter trustees.
“They’ll put that wording in, and hopefully they can get it done,” he said.
