By Del Stover
6/7/05 -- For school officials in West Des Moines, Iowa, it was a disturbing discovery: A teenager convicted of molesting a 13-year-old girl was enrolled in one of their junior high schools.
It was a situation that gave local officials reason to pause. They knew all about conducting criminal background checks on new employees, and they had heard that some schools were beginning to screen volunteers. And they were aware that convicted sex offenders lived in the community.
But now they also had to worry about sex offenders among their students.
“It’s difficult when you’re talking about children as the offenders,” says school board President John Ambroson. “As a board member, you have a responsibility to provide for the educational needs of all children. But at the same time, you need to err on the side of safety.”
The school board ultimately resolved the issue by removing the student from school and providing off-campus tutoring. But the incident highlights a sobering reality: School officials must accept that -- while not a great threat to students -- the existence of pedophiles and other sex offenders in our society cannot be ignored.
New state laws
Indeed, recent incidents across the nation make that fact clear:
• A convicted sex offender was found volunteering in a preschool program at Grover Beach (Calif.) Elementary School.
• Officials in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, were alarmed to learn that a man convicted of molesting 9 and 10-year-old girls had moved into a home close to two of their schools.
• A convicted sex offender working for the transit authority was arrested outside a Hingham, Mass., school after dropping off two handicapped adult students.
• A man was arrested in Vancouver, Wash., after he allegedly followed three girls on their way to school and ordered them into his car.
• A substitute teacher in Naperville, Ill., was removed from the classroom after allegations of inappropriately touching a student.
• The husband of a teacher was banned from schools in the Lakeland (Wash.) school district after it was discovered he was a registered sex offender.
Such incidents -- and particularly a series of high-profile sex crimes against children in recent months -- have sparked a great deal of debate recently about protecting children from sexual predators.
As a result, legislation has been proposed in several states that could have an impact on local school decision making.
In May, in response to the kidnapping, rape, and murder of a 9-year-old girl, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush signed one of the nation’s toughest laws against sexual predators. It lengthens prison sentences and requires satellite tracking of the state’s worst sex offenders, which is designed to warn authorities if an offender visits somewhere off limits, such as a school.
Iowa has passed legislation that makes it easier for school officials to get information on sex offenders in their communities. This measure was introduced after the March slaying of a 10-year-old by a convicted sex offender who refused treatment while in prison and was released without supervision only halfway through his five-year prison term.
Background checks
The Lincoln, Neb., school district, which has conducted background checks on new employees since 1994, tightened its screening methods after an incident in the community last year.
“Last fall, we checked the criminal records of 7,237 employees,” says Nancy Biggs, the district’s associate superintendent for human resources. “It’s time consuming. It does cost money. But once people know you conduct these checks, there’s less chance that people with that kind of background will apply [for a job].”
In Spokane, Wash., school officials have gone a step farther and conducted background checks on the school system’s 8,000 community volunteers. Occasionally, a volunteer will turn out to have a criminal record, and “we do a reject letter,” says Mary Maki, the district’s acting volunteer coordinator.
In the Spring (Texas) Independent School District, officials are using a commercial security service to scan the driver’s license of every visitor that walks through a school door -- and flag those with a criminal record.
Despite some privacy concerns among parents, the new system -- developed by Houston-based Raptor Technologies -- already has made a difference, school officials say. Several vendors and delivery workers have been refused access because they were on the state’s sex offender registry.
The technology already has led to policy changes in Sarasota County, Fla., where a similar system identified two convicted sex offenders who had come to work as subcontractors at a middle school. They were turned away.
Now, says district spokesperson Sheila Weiss, “we have asked that all of our contractors that deal with us do background checks before they’re allowed on our school campuses.”
Juvenile offenders
Yet, as school officials shore up their defenses against sexual predators, they’re finding holes in the system. At East Peoria (Ill.) Community High School, school officials discovered a flaw in the state’s notification system after a mother complained that a 16-year-old who had molested her 7-year-old son was attending a class with her older son.
It turns out that the names of about 1,100 juvenile sex offenders are largely kept confidential, although local authorities are supposed to inform schools when a juvenile sex offender enrolls in a school.
A similar problem existed in Iowa, where until recently schools only were notified about the most dangerous juvenile offenders. Even then, school officials had no authority to stop these youths from returning to school.
“There was a glitch in the law,” says Mary Gannon, an attorney for the Iowa Association of School Boards, who proposed changes in the law last year. In some instances, schools had to allow offenders to return to schools where their victims were enrolled.
Not only were victims confronted with the presence of their attacker on campus, at least one offender was beaten up by students upon his return to school, she says. “School boards had to have more options available to them.”
They do now. A new state law promises school officials better access to information on young offenders and gives them more authority to determine how best to educate these juveniles while protecting other students.
Elsewhere, school officials are taking steps to protect students when they’re away from campus. In West Des Moines, for example, school bus drivers are given information on convicted sex offenders who live along their routes. Some bus stops have been relocated so students aren’t expected to gather near offenders’ homes.
Educate parents
In Oregon’s North Clackamas schools, officials earlier this year hosted a workshop to teach parents how to identify potential molesters or threats to their children. It was a response to incidents of sexual abuse in the community and other school systems.
In Clarkstown, N.Y., school officials sent out letters in April informing parents about three sex offenders living in the area. Similar warnings were mailed out by the nearby Nanuet school system.
Nanuet Superintendent Mark S. NcNeill told parents there was no indication that these individuals had approached school grounds. But, he wrote, parents should be aware “of the presence of individuals within our greater community [such as malls and shopping centers] who may present a danger.”
‘Predator-free zones’
School board members also may see efforts by state and municipal lawmakers to impose tougher restrictions on how close convicted sex offenders can live to schools.
In Michigan, for instance, Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm has called for a law to create “predator-free zones” of 1,000 feet around schools. In Miami Beach, Fla., city leaders have proposed banning sex offenders from living within 2,500 feet of a school, playground, or any place children gather.
Such laws could prove controversial, however, if overly stringent. In Miami Beach, for example, critics point out that the city’s proposal would effectively force sex offenders out of the city -- leaving the city open to a legal challenge.
But the recent spate of legislation and proposals is no surprise, given the outrage that normally follows a highly publicized incident of a child being sexually abused, says Scott Matson, research associate with the Center for Sex Offender Management, a training and technical assistance group that works with parole officers.
“What’s happened is we’ve had a couple of serious, brutal cases in close proximity time wise, and that tends to bring a lot of attention to the issue,” Matson says.
Despite the heinous nature of recent incidents, he says school officials should know that only a small percentage of convicted sex offenders pose a constant danger to children.
If a community is alarmed by the presence of known sex offenders in the area, Matson suggests schools host a meeting for parents where law enforcement and probation officers talk about the situation, how they’re dealing with these offenders, and “help quell their fears and misconceptions.”
Meanwhile, some school officials are asking for better information. A state’s sex offender registry doesn’t always explain whether an individual is guilty of public exposure or a violent rape -- or whether the person is considered a serious risk in the future.
When dealing with juvenile sex offenders, getting more information is particularly important in deciding upon a reasoned response, says Ambroson of Des Moines. Not all juvenile offenders are a serious risk to their peers, and troubled youths should sometimes be given the opportunity to put their mistakes behind them.
“There is a wide variety of reasons why a person is put on a sex offender list,” he says. “I think you need to be sensitive to that, to look at each individual situation. These are really challenging issues, but ones that all of us have to think about and not overreact.”