February 15, 2023

In Ohio, the police have arrested a school bus driver who drove buses for four months with a warrant. Since 2007, Ohio has used an alert system called Rapback. This system warns school districts when a bus driver or teacher gets arrested. Unfortunately, the program failed to alert the school district about this bus driver’s warrant for arrest. Though the charges proved unrelated to the person’s job as a bus driver, questions about why the school district did not learn about the warrant.

According to the Ohio Department of Education (ODE), they started the Rapback program to provide additional safeguards that prevent convicted criminals from keeping positions of trust. As a result, bus drivers and teachers must enroll in the system. Once registered, the program will take their fingerprints from the background screening process and retain them in a separate applicant fingerprint database. However, the Rapback system looks at Ohio-specific records.

Rapback uses these fingerprints when comparing new criminal fingerprints and submits the findings to Ohio’s Bureau of Criminal Investigations as needed during court disposition processes. In addition, the Bureau of Criminal Investigations will supply the Department of Education with rap sheet information if the program finds a match.

In this case, the court records indicate four charges from September 18, including assault and domestic violence. For example, the records accused the bus driver of choking and threatening to kill their significant other. The court also revealed that the bus driver did not enroll in Rapback.

The school district hired the individual in March of 2022, months before the charges occurred. However, records revealed past domestic violence and assault charges. For example, the bus driver faced accusations of punching a family member in the face, causing them to bleed. According to court records, the bus driver pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct. As a result, the bus driver did not face arrest until January 31, 2023; hence Rapback not flagging them.

The Ohio Revised Code allows school districts to receive Rapback notices if a fingerprint background check is a condition of employment. For example, school districts can enroll bus drivers in Rapback with background checks that happened within the year. They can do this by entering the driver’s demographic information in the School Foundation Payment System. Unfortunately, the Rapback Fingerprint database notifies school districts about arrests only, not issued warrants.

The Ohio Administrative Code requires employing districts or transportation service providers to suspend a driver from all duties requiring child care, custody, or control. This suspension takes place while waiting for the outcome of the criminal action if arrested, summoned, or indicated for an alleged criminal offense listed in the rule.

According to Columbus City Schools, the transportation department informs the Ohio Department of Education’s Safe Site when drivers complete their training. Furthermore, they claimed that drivers get automatically enrolled into Rapback. ODE is the one in control of the database and communicates with the Attorney General’s (AG) office.

Transportation performs the initial FBI and BCII through the AG’s office as a driver is completing the hiring process. After hiring a driver, the ODE Safesite runs a BCII every night, and their FBI checks get renewed every six years. The school follows the process shown on the ODE Rapback Service page. In this case, the results did not reach ODE, only the Columbus City Schools.

This case shows the importance of running thorough background checks on potential employees. This task proves especially crucial for people in sensitive positions. As such, companies should continuously monitor employees who work with vulnerable individuals. The best way to do this is to partner with a background check company you can trust.

Pre-employ makes background checks easy and reliable. Speak with a sales representative today.

Source