Montgomery Co. school officials say progress made in backlog of employee background checks
Montgomery County school officials told a council committee Friday that they’ve made progress updating the criminal background checks on employees in the system.
In August, the Office of the Inspector General for Montgomery County found that more than 12,000 school employees — nearly half the workforce — had not had their criminal background checks updated.
The Aug. 4 report also indicated 4,900 individuals had not had their initial screenings by Child Protective Services completed.
Inspector General Megan Limarzi and school officials appeared before the Montgomery County Council’s Audit Committee to issue the progress report.
Essie McGuire, chief of staff for the Montgomery County Public School system, reported significant headway was made on updating the screening process. “We are more than halfway through our school-based rescreening, which we’re very pleased about,” she said.
As of Nov. 7, McGuire said “over 6,400 individuals” were rescreened, leaving about 7,500 cases to be finished.
“We feel very confident that we will be able to have completed our school-by-school, cluster-by-cluster approach before the winter break,” McGuire said.
McGuire said there may be some “loose ends to complete in January, but we will have finished the first pass, and gone through all the school-based and transportation employees before winter break.”
Asked how she felt about the report, Limarzi told Council President Kate Stewart that she felt it was “still very early” in the process, and that “as a profession, we don’t opine on things before we have all the facts in front of us to review.”
However, Limarzi told the council, “MCPS obviously has attacked these issues out of the gate from the time the report was issued and has done a great deal of work, which is excellent.”
Overall, Limarzi said, “the amount of work that’s been done here is to be commended.”
Limarzi said the recommendations for improving the process of conducting and tracking background checks “remain open,” pending completion of the background checks by the schools.