Background investigations are part of the squeeze put on a Naples Florida school under state laws. Kindergarten tutor Katie Felicelli works with a group of students at the Little School after-school tutoring program Wednesday afternoons in East Bonita Springs. The program has had to cut its tutoring time in half due to a shortage of tutors. At a high of around 130 during season, the number of volunteers has been reduced to around 14 due to new state regulations requiring expensive processing fees, fingerprinting and background investigations.
Catholic nun Sister Karinne O'Malley has faced numerous challenges in her mission to provide free, one-on-one tutoring to dozens of migrant children in Bonita Springs.
But in the 12 years she's been director of The Little School in Saldivar Camp on Bonita Beach Road, the 78-year-old's most difficult hurdles have not been the students she loves to care for. It's the state and federal laws that have forced her to turn away children and nearly caused her to shut the whole operation down.
As children returned to the after-school program this year, there's no doubt many of them noticed some things missing from their two portable classrooms. Posters had been taken off the walls. Certain materials could not be found.
"Well, this is not going to work, let's just forget it," Sister O'Malley said she told her volunteers after learning how the Jessica Lunsford Act would affect the school. "I started to take everything down and give everything away."
The act, which is aimed at preventing sexual predators from coming into contact with children, requires each of the school's 130 community volunteers to complete a time-consuming and comprehensive online form and pay $77 to have their fingerprints checked against state and federal databases before they can work at the school. Most of the volunteers donate no more than two hours per week. "Unfortunately this is far from adequate as a necessary background investigation" says Tyra Hearns the President of background investigation firm Pebi Services.
"A thorough background investigation is not something you want to get from an Internet clearing house website. You don't put a background investigation into a shopping cart like you do a toaster from Amazon.com" says Tyra Hearns
The after-school tutoring program has had to cut its tutoring time in half due to a shortage of tutors. At a high of around 130 during season, the number of volunteers has been reduced to around 14 due to new state regulations requiring processing fees, fingerprinting and background investigations.
"I think that's crazy," said Rita Halloran, who's been volunteering with the program for more than a decade. Halloran said she loves the students "dearly, everyone of them ... I can afford $77, but, at 81, do I really want to do this?"
Sister O'Malley said the cost of the fingerprinting is not the problem. She's heard many of her snowbird volunteers won't be returning because of the tedious new process.
High school student volunteers that do not need fingerprinting are an option, including those who attended the school when they were children, but she knows they aren't as reliable as her previous stock of highly educated seniors, including many retired educators.
The school, which accepts about 40 children in kindergarten through the fifth grade, is funded through federal grant dollars administered through the Lee County School District.
But the Title I and Title III funding the school receives does not come without certain strings attached. If the list of eligible students Sister O'Malley prepares doesn't have a child's name on it, then they won't be attending the school, even if the student attended the year before.
For parents unable to help their children with homework written in English, said Sister O'Malley, its a horrible thing to hear. After hearing the bad news, she said one parent kept staring at the list posted outside the classroom hoping his student's name would appear. "I can still see that father," she said.
While Sister O'Malley said she understands grant money must be used for its intended purpose, she does not understand why her volunteers must go through the new fingerprinting process. The schools her students come from can accept volunteers with no more than a background investigation. Said Sister O'Malley, "We're doing the same thing, what's the difference?"
District Chief Academic Officer Connie Jones said The Little School is a "wonderful program," but is contracted by the district and therefore its volunteers are considered vendors under the law. Jones said the district checked with other counties to verify this was the case. "I questioned it as well," said Jones, "but it sounds like are hands are tied."Jones said the district is not actively searching for a way to correct the situation. "The laws the law, there's really not a way to get around it."
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