School Crime: Fingerprint the teachers?
by
Debra Hatch
at
Mt. Ararat High School

 

For Mt. Ararat High School teachers Dianne Pelletier, Genie Wheelwright, Barbara Franklin and Karen Tilbor, sometimes standing up for an ideal and value can come with the price. It may mean giving up something that has been a part of their life for years: their jobs.

The "Mt. Ararat four" are just some of the 47 educators who signed the Maine Educators Against Fingerprinting pledge to refuse to submit to a Maine law which requires all school employees to have their fingerprints taken and a FBI background check conducted, and to pay a $49 fee to have the service done. Maine became the 32 state to do this.

The law, LD 2540 "An Act Concerning Fingerprinting and Background Checks for School Employees," was passed in 1996 and began to be instituted in schools across the state last October. Legislators have been working on an amendment to the law to allocate state funds to pay for it, relieving all 70,000 of those affected from having to pay an estimated $3,430,000.

The law originally carried funding from the state, but was eliminated by the appropriation committee. Governor Angus King was aware of this when the law passed. Proponents of the law say that it has the capability of fettering out all potential or current offenders and that will help to keep the children in the state's schools safe.

But the Mt. Ararat four don't buy it.

"I look at some of my colleagues who have been teaching for 20, some even 30 years and I know how much they have given to the kids and how much of their lives they have given," Wheelwright said. "Suddenly to question their motives and what they have been doing with those kids I find so extraordinarily offensive that I just can't be part of it."

For Pelletier, the first of the four to be required to go through the process, it's personal. "To me it's giving over a part of me to the state that's not theirs to have and they have no cause to be asking for it," Pelletier said. "I can't be part of something that then brings us to another place where it's not only teachers now that we're fingerprinting."

The largest issues for those opposed to the law include that all school employees must pay the $49 fee, and the teachers feel like the law will do very little to prevent abuse of children - especially when the chance of a school employee abusing a child is minuscule.

Statistics provided by the Maine Department of Education and the Maine Parent Teacher Association report that 42 teachers, technicians, and administrators in the last 10 years have had criminal convictions that would have disqualified them from holding a license, and were discovered only upon recertification. Of these individuals, 27 had a conviction for sexual abuse, sexual contact, or sexual assault of a minor and the individuals were not found through fingerprinting. (See nationwide sexual abuse statistics).

National figures from the Department of Health and Human Services show parents or other relatives perpetrate 85 percent of child abuse cases. Nationally, school staff only fall into about 0.3 percent of abuse cases -- in Maine in-school abuse only constitutes two-tenths of one percent of the total abuse occurring in schools. (For nationwide information on school crime, see National Center for Education Statistics).

The proponents, led by the Parent Teacher Association, child advocacy groups, and the department of education, believe that even the small amount of offenders is reason enough to keep the law the way it is. DOE Commissioner J. Duke Albanese, said in testimony to the state: "We must do everything in our power to keep convicted criminals with a record of child abuse and exploitation or other serious crimes that endanger children out of our schools and away from our children." The National Education Association (NEA) sets sharp limits on the circumstances fingerprinting of staff is acceptable.

Wheelwright agrees. She believes if the state and the proponents feel the law is really necessary, allowing some people to stay in the system for as long as three to four years without being fingerprinted is simply unacceptable. And with conflicting laws on the books, the teachers believe fixing the laws would help more than instituting new ones. Wheelwright said that those who can't make the same pledge have been extremely apologetic and have felt guilty that they couldn't make the same pledge.

" They say they just cannot afford to do this right now and I understand that," Wheelwright said. "There are many, many reasons why people are feeling they have to go along with this, but it doesn't mean they support it. And in so many ways to me that's worse, because that's a population being held hostage."

School Administrative District 75 has begun the process and will finish on Monday, May 8. According to Superintendent Michael Wilhelm and school board members, the school district will not swallow the cost for their employees, even while neighboring school system, Brunswick, has. But for their students, the teachers believe that the chance to see someone give up their career for a belief is a very powerful lesson. Only, it is one lesson they wish they didn't have to teach."

Copyright ©2000 John Contreraz
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