Parent Volunteers At Ramsey Schools May Need Fingerprinting Background Check

Parents who volunteer in may soon be required to get fingerprinted in order to do the job.

Leadership at the district’s PTOs have been grappling with the question for several years, Interim Superintendent Bruce DeYoung said in a presentation to the Board of Education Tuesday night.

“Up until this point, our policy and the state statute have been very permissive – we could require background checks [of all school volunteers], but now we only have it in place for very specific instances,” he said.

According to DeYoung, the board has several decisions to make regarding the possibility of backgrounds checks, namely who will need one, and what type of check will it be.

He suggested, based on the meeting with PTO presidents earlier Tuesday, that several tiers of volunteer exist, each requiring a different level of background check.

For example, parents volunteering as someone who would go to field trips, volunteering on an ongoing basis, and who could potentially be alone with kids without being under the direct supervision of a staff member, would be fingerprinted, he said.

Volunteers who would not be alone with kids, or who volunteer in a place like the library, which is always staffed, might not be required.

The superintendent suggested two background check options – a light version, which would include asking for a persons’ social security number, or a state version, which requires fingerprinting.

According to Board member Laura Behrmann, PTO parents gave “a lot of pushback” about the idea of being fingerprinted. “There is a tremendous resistance to fingerprinting,” she said of parent volunteers. “They also have a lot of questions,” she said, like who in the district would hold all of the background information, and what types of “marks” on a person’s checklist would prohibit him or her from volunteering in the schools.

The PTOs did agree, she said, that some sort of background check should be required of all volunteers who are interacting with Ramsey students. “The fingerprints seem to be a big hang-up, but the bottom line is our kids have to be safe,” Behrmann said.

While the board is deciding which method it wants to require, and for whom, current parent volunteers should have at least a basic background check, via a method that checks a person’s social security number, the board said. A similar check exists for volunteers in the borough’s rec department, school officials said.

The board said it would look into both background check options, and make a decision later about which one will be required of parent volunteers moving forward.