Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent Thomas Taylor said the school system, which is the largest in the state, is still working to clear up the backlog of background checks discovered in a recent inspector general’s report.
Taylor emphasized to reporters on Wednesday that “MCPS is a safe place to send your children,” and that all employees had been fingerprinted.
While all employees have had their fingerprints taken, Taylor said, “Not all of them had been enrolled in a program called RapBack, which is a continuous check program.”
“We are in the process of going back and addressing our employee class that was hired prior to 2019 to make sure that they are up to date and that they are enrolled in that RapBack program,” Taylor said.
An Aug. 4 report by the Montgomery County Office of the Inspector General found that nearly half of the school system’s employees — roughly 13,000 — had criminal background checks that were out of date. The report also found that as many as 5,000 employees who may have unsupervised contact with children had not been screened through a Child Protective Services check.
In a letter responding to the report, Taylor wrote that he was “deeply disappointed in the lack of rigor” in the OIG’s review.
But Taylor changed his tune Wednesday.
“I want to thank the inspector general for elevating this. I’m not sure that I would have caught this without her help,” he said, referring to Inspector General Megan Davey Limarzi.
Taylor went on to say that it’s going to take “several months” to complete the more rigorous screening process, but assured concerned parents that each school staff member has been through a background check and fingerprint process.
He said there were “several thousand” cases being addressed out of a workforce of nearly 30,000.
“We do have a supervision plan to make sure that anyone who is not fully cleared to our standards is being supervised to a different level,” Taylor said.
The badges worn by employees will also indicate who’s been through the most recent screening.
“The badges used to be horizontal, and now they are vertical to show when we have cleared all of our employees,” Taylor said. “We’re going to be going school to school … to go and verify every employee in the district.”
“That’s what’s going to take us a while. We have five mobile teams that we’re going to start making the rounds the second week of school, going through every employee record just to make sure that we’re clear,” he said.
Schools open for “Transition Day” on Monday. The first day of school systemwide will be held Tuesday.
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