Houston, TX

According to the Houston Chronicle, Governor Rick Perry, with the backing of the state legislature, announced that Texas will pay for school districts to increase their background checks of teachers and other educators, such as administrators, counselors, librarians and other professionals. This includes fingerprinting and background checks of criminal history. The cost is $50 per person and is projected to cost the state $10 million over the next two years.

The background checks and fingerprinting was implemented as a requirement in 2003. However, after they passed it into law earlier this year state legislators stripped the state funding for it from the budget. School districts or the teachers themselves would have been forced to cover the cost.

Teacher groups objected and

On Monday, Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and House Speaker Tom Craddick signed a letter directing the Texas Education Agency to shift funding to cover the $50-per-person cost of the checks for teachers, administrators, counselors, librarians and other professionals.

The Chronicle also reports

Support personnel, such as bus drivers, janitors and cafeteria workers, also will have to undergo criminal background checks but will not have to submit their fingerprints.

Texas began requiring national criminal background checks for all teaching candidates in 2003, but that law did not apply to teachers who were already certified. Since those checks began, almost 200 candidates have been found to have serious offenses on their records, including sexual misconduct and crimes against children.

Do you believe this is a good allocation of state money? Should support personnel also be required to undergo the same scrutiny as teachers and educators?