Background Check Policy for Hiring Teachers Questioned in Lawsuit against School District

Norbert Ryan

By Amanda Kelley
The Myrtle Beach Herald

The father of a former St. James Middle School student is suing Horry County Schools over the district’s hiring of a teacher who had sex with the man’s then-13-year-old daughter, according to court records.
That teacher, Norbert Ryan, had a sexual relationship with one of his students in Michigan prior to being hired by Horry County Schools, the lawsuit states. Neither the local girl nor her father are identified in the lawsuit, which was filed this week in civil court.
Jeff Chandler, the family’s attorney, said information about Ryan’s past could have easily been obtained by Horry County Schools. “The SRO (school resource officer) found it by just doing a little inquiry by calling the former high school in Michigan,” he said. “The school district failed our client in the hiring.”
Police said Ryan was a 32-year-old social studies teacher at St. James Middle when he had sex with the girl during the 2009-2010 school year. The illegal relationship led to Ryan’s arrest. He was sentenced to seven years in prison last year after pleading guilty to a charge of second-degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor younger than 16. He was ordered to pay court costs and was placed on the central registry of child abuse and neglect.
The lawsuit states that the school district was negligent in both the supervision of its students and the screening of prospective hires. Teal Britton, a spokeswoman for Horry County Schools, said the district’s process for handling background checks varies depending on the applicant.
“Let’s just say that [someone] teaches somewhere else in the system or they are a new teacher in South Carolina,” she said. “They’ve already gone through a background check as part of their certification.”
For those teachers, Britton said, there’s no additional check through the State Law Enforcement Division (SLED).
Out-of-state hires are put through a SLED records check, but that search only turns up in-state offenses.
Just looking at an in-state criminal history isn’t thorough enough, said Kenneth Trump, a Cleveland-based school security consultant.
In cases where teachers have inappropriate relations with students, he said it’s actually common for those teachers’ criminal history records to come up clean.
“The words background check and criminal history check are not one in the same,” he said. “A criminal history check is just that. It is a records check of prior crime. A background check should be more comprehensive. It should include a criminal history check, but it should encompass a great deal more, including character references.”
Horry County Schools screens out-of-state teachers differently than it does in-state or newly certified ones, Britton said.
“There would be reference checks,” she said. “And they have the ability to do more expansive checks if there is a suggestion that that needs to be done.”
Although the district can do a more thorough background check, Britton said that doesn’t necessarily happen.
“[If] someone certified from another state received very favorable recommendations for employment, [then] there would not necessarily be a national background check,” Britton said.
Trump questions whether that practice is sufficient.
“What is the trigger to get them to dig further?” he asked. “You have to dig to find the red flag to dig further. If you’re only scratching the surface, then you’re taking transcripts or information that is submitted by the applicant at face value.”
The issue of background checks comes down to cost.
“With 5,400 employees and the cost of doing those checks, you don’t annually check everyone,” Britton said. “But you do when there is a suggestion for cause to do so.”
The cost adds up quickly for the district. Britton said even parents wishing to chaperone field trips are required to have a SLED background check.
“It costs us $25 at a minimum to check you to see if it’s OK to be around kids in the classroom,” she said. “You can see those costs add up.”
Trump said the district’s explanation sounds familiar.
“What school districts historically have not done is a truly thorough background check,” he said. “They do the minimum required under state mandate and they do cursory checks and verifications of employment dates. But typically the schools point out that due to budgetary and staffing restraints they don’t have the resources to do comprehensive background checks.”
Many districts pass off troubling teachers on other districts, he said. He calls this “passing the trash.”
“Historically school districts, when they have a problem employee or someone suspected of being a problematic employee, instead of prosecuting or terminating that employee they will allow and encourage the employee to resign and then that employee later on moves to other districts,” he said.
The only thing that the then-former school district will say is that a person was hired here from this date to that date.”
Trump said school districts need to do more detailed background checks.
“It’s doing their due diligence and it’s a cultural change,” he said. “If you’re doing a thorough background check, often it can be those things that are not said by a previous employer that can be as much a red flag as those things that are said.”
Other things to pay attention to are on paper. Trump said gaps in employment and significant mobility could be reasons to question candidacy, though mobility will change if there is a spouse in the military.
“You don’t always see major and frequent movement from town to town and state to state,” Trump said of educators. “If you start seeing a person move, and especially if they’re not moving up the ladder position-wise, that can be a red flag.”
He said school districts need to encourage employees to report their suspicions and action should be taken if those questions are confirmed.
Britton said Tuesday that the school district had not been served with the family’s lawsuit. She said the district typically doesn’t discuss pending litigation.
The school district where Ryan reportedly worked in Michigan referred questions to its human resources division. Calls to that division were not returned.

Posted by Pebi Services President Tyra Hearns

Casting assistant's past prompts calls for screening

By Dawn C. Chmielewski
Los Angeles Times

A convicted child molester working as a Hollywood casting director began cooperating with a Los Angeles Police Department investigation, while child protection advocates called for background checks for those with access to child actors.

Jason James Murphy, who served prison time for the 1996 kidnapping and molesting of an 8-year-old boy in suburban Seattle, has spent the last decade working as a casting assistant. He helped find young actors for movies including the science fiction hit "Super 8" and the forthcoming comedy "The Three Stooges."

The casting directors who hired Murphy — who obtained casting jobs under the name Jason James — said they were unaware of his criminal conviction. LAPD representatives said Friday that, although Murphy is under investigation, there is no evidence that he had committed new crimes.

Murphy's Hollywood career has caused anxiety among parents of child actors on the film and TV audition circuit.
"They're just freaking out," said Anne Henry, co-founder of BizParentz Foundation, a nonprofit support group for parents whose children work in the entertainment industry. Henry said she spent the morning dealing with frantic parents worried that Murphy might have been alone with their children during casting sessions and could have obtained photos or videotapes of them.

"It's the one place in our industry when the kids are alone," Henry said. "In casting situations, the parents are never in the room for an audition. Some guy comes up. They take your kid down the hall and disappear for 20 minutes. You never know."

Murphy, 35, is cooperating with an investigation into whether he complied with requirements for registered sex offenders, said Det. Christopher Merlo of the department's West Bureau Registration Enforcement and Compliance Team. "It's a complicated investigation because we have to do a lot of research on where he's been and what he's done," Merlo said, adding that detectives so far have no evidence of additional victims.

Murphy has declined repeated requests for interviews. Henry and other advocates called for fingerprinting and background checks for anyone having contact with minors, as is customary for coaches, Boy Scout leaders and child-care providers.

"The industry has to recognize we have any number of predators who have insinuated themselves into the world of children. They are dance teachers, drama teachers, gymnastics teachers, coaches — as we have seen at Penn State," said Paul Petersen, a former child actor who founded A Minor Consideration, a nonprofit advocacy group for young performers. "And no one is doing any checking."

Others called on unions to do more thorough screening.

Acting coach and manager Betty Bridges has been vocal about pressing the unions to conduct thorough checks on casting agents and directors. Her son Todd, who starred on the NBC comedy "Diff'rent Strokes," was sexually abused as a child by his publicist. "The unions need to do a background check," she said. "They need to make sure that every time they put in a casting director, they need to know what her or his background is."
Since 2008, under the name Jason James, Murphy has been a member of Teamsters Local 399, whose business agent, Ed Duffy, said, "We're very saddened by this situation, if in fact it's true."

Local 399 also represents location managers and studio drivers. But unlike drivers, Duffy said, casting directors do not have to be licensed and are not subject to drug and alcohol testing. "It's up to the employer to vet these people," he added

Posted by Pebi Services President Tyra Hearns

Background Investigations in Indiana have failed the students

By Andy Gammill
Indianapolis Star

The 7-year-old tried to keep her teacher's hands off her.

She faked stomachaches, hoping to stay home from school.

When that failed, a prosecutor later said, the girl wore dresses so the teacher couldn't slip his hand down the back of her pants.

It was a battle she might have been spared in another state: Four years earlier, two different girls in different classes accused the same teacher, Jeffrey Baber, of the same thing. Nothing happened after police discounted those claims.

In Georgia, the accusations would have been enough to spark a review by state investigators.

In Ohio, the allegations would have been put on record for parents to check.

In Utah and other states, the complaints likely would have cost him his educator's license.

In Indiana, he kept teaching.

The case highlights flaws in the state's approach to protecting schoolchildren. The Indiana Department of Education's efforts are largely limited to conducting criminal background checks within Indiana and checking newspaper clippings for educators who have been arrested. That information helps the state revoke 10 to 20 licenses a year.

Other states go much further to find and remove teachers who could put children at risk.

Most do more extensive nationwide criminal checks. Some require police and district officials to notify state authorities when a teacher has been investigated, arrested or accused of misconduct.

Indiana relies mainly on local school systems to root out dangerous teachers, a method that doesn't always work. Districts sometimes bury records of embarrassing or thorny cases in their files, hiding information from the public and other schools looking to hire a teacher.

Indiana's problems are no surprise to legislators, superintendents, school boards or members of the state's Board of Education. They've known for years that schools may unknowingly hire teachers who pose a threat to students.

"It scares the hell out of me," said Todd Huston, Fishers, a member of the State Board of Education. "The problem now is that we don't really have sustained policies. It's on a district-by-district basis."

Attempts to strengthen the safeguards have stalled.

What's left is so ineffective that no one can say how many of the state's 62,000 licensed teachers have criminal records, or whether predators are making the rounds of Indiana schools.

An Indianapolis Star review of Marion County police reports found dozens of current teachers with arrests for crimes including battery on a police officer, domestic battery, repeated traffic violations, soliciting a prostitute and drunken driving -- some as many as two or three times. Although they may be alarming to parents, some of these offenses might not be grounds for revocation of a teaching license.

The Star's investigation also found four cases where state laws didn't keep teachers out of classrooms even after more serious problems arose.

The result? Children taught by a teacher arrested on a charge of cocaine dealing. A teacher who brought marijuana to school. One with a long history of intimidating students.

And Baber.

After a jury convicted him of molesting the 7-year-old in 2005, he pleaded guilty to molesting another girl.

And another one. He had been molesting Beech Grove schoolchildren for at least four years.

The district's insurers paid out $740,000 to three victims.

Baber finally lost his license to teach.

Background checks

Limited Indiana search lets Florida drug dealer in school

Michael Warner's references described him as an energetic, charming role model, and officials at Irvington Community School were excited to hire him.

The new science teacher passed a criminal history check by the charter school, and the state had stopped running checks on him because he held a lifetime teaching license.

Even if the Department of Education had screened him again, the checks run by the school and the state review only Indiana court records and would have missed his arrest in Florida on a charge of dealing cocaine.

Florida officials said Warner pleaded guilty to possessing cocaine with intent to sell and was sentenced to 90 days in jail and three years of probation.

More than 40 states require comprehensive background checks that turn up arrests across the country before teachers can be licensed to teach. Indiana does check a national database of teachers who have lost their licenses, but beyond that, state law requires a "limited criminal history" check that reviews Indiana court records.

With the limited statewide name-based check, old arrests without a disposition won't turn up, and some counties had spotty records on entering data into the system.

After a private investigator tipped off Irvington Community School in 2006, Warner resigned and the state took away his license.

"We've deepened our interview and reference checks," said Timothy Ehrgott, the school's president. "We learned our lesson."

Outside Indiana, that task often is handled by state officials rather than local schools. Utah and Maine require their state police agencies to keep names of educators in an electronic system that alerts officials when a teacher is arrested.

A coalition of state governments that maintains a national database of teacher misconduct also recommends more stringent checks.

The National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification urges states to use state and FBI checks for all new teachers, and every five years for all educators, director Roy Einreinhofer said.

Indiana does neither.

A few school districts feel so strongly that Indiana's system is too weak that they pay for national searches on their own.

"We don't think it goes deep enough into data," said John Ellis, director of the state superintendents' association. "The thing that frustrates school officials is there's too many holes in the system."

No one tells the state

School drug arrest details not shared, so teacher kept license

When police arrived at School 83 in Indianapolis one evening in May 2005, according to their report, a teacher told them he was high on marijuana.

They asked him whether he had drugs on him, the report said, and he said they were in his car. Officers searched the car, found marijuana and arrested the teacher, Eric J. Potthast, on charges of possession of marijuana and paraphernalia.

Potthast took a deal from the court, agreeing to pay a fee, admit his guilt and attend behavior-modification classes. After he did so, the charges were dropped.

Indiana, unlike other states, does not require schools and police to report most teacher misconduct to state officials.

So Indianapolis Public Schools did not. Potthast resigned a few months later.

Potthast disclosed the misdemeanor on his next application for a teaching license. But what he didn't say and what state officials don't appear to have known was that the incident happened at a school, an offense that cost at least one other Indiana teacher his license.

So Potthast's license was renewed, despite the drugs he brought to school. That left it up to a school district to decide whether to put him in a classroom.

He was rehired the next year by IPS, which struggles to find teachers and substitutes to fill classrooms when teachers quit. He was fired last month for failing to keep his teaching license up to date.

"Was it wise to hire him?" IPS spokeswoman Kim L. Hooper said. "On behalf of the district, I would say no. But I know we also struggle to find subs in this district."

Prosecutors and superintendents must tell the state about misbehaving teachers only if they are convicted of a short list of felonies: kidnapping, dealing drugs or sex crimes against children.

Even those cases can stay off the state's radar if there's no conviction or the teacher pleads guilty to lesser charges. If a teacher is arrested on a charge of murder, raping an adult, assault, possessing child pornography or most other crimes, no one is required to tell state education officials.

"Ideally we would want to be notified anytime anybody holding a teacher license gets arrested," said Kevin McDowell, general counsel for the Indiana Department of Education. "Some states do that."

Indiana teachers who are arrested for many crimes must report a conviction to their school district, but the districts have no obligation to tell anyone else.

In other states, teachers are required to report their own arrests to the state, and police must tell education officials when a teacher commits a crime. Some hire teams of investigators that do nothing but look into teacher misconduct.

The Indiana Department of Education relies on calls from parents reading newspaper articles and a service that reviews newspapers for arrests of teachers.

If there's no article, the state never knows.

Quiet resignations

School let teacher with past of intimidation quit, get another job

Lawrence Central High School history teacher Charles E. Stallworth's dispute with one boy turned ugly three years ago at a Northside movie theater where the boy worked.

The theater manager called police after the teen said his teacher had come in, threatened him and then made a phone call.

Worried for the boy's safety, the manager hid the boy in an office. On video, they watched as Stallworth met two men who arrived at the theater and handed them money, according to a probable cause affidavit. Those men asked other employees where they could find the boy and then staked out the employee entrance, the affidavit said.

When police arrived, they ordered the two men to leave and questioned Stallworth about the incident. Despite the video evidence, he said he made no phone calls at the theater and talked to no one while he was there, the court records said.

Stallworth pleaded guilty to lying to police about the incident, but a felony intimidation charge was dropped. He quietly retired.

It wasn't the first time he had been accused of intimidating students. He was suspended for two days in 2001 after the district substantiated a girl's claim that he hit her on the back so hard he left a red mark.

"Your behavior on November 3, 2000, is not acceptable and you are hereby reprimanded for your action," an administrator wrote to him. "In addition, this incident seems to be one in a long line of other incidents of an intimidating nature towards students."

In a statement this past week, Lawrence Township Schools said Stallworth had planned to fight efforts to fire him and that an agreement letting him retire got him out of the classroom and prevented him from suing the district or the student.

Stallworth moved to Alaska and got a teaching job in Anchorage.

Like the other teachers highlighted here, Stallworth could not be reached or did not return messages left at phone numbers listed in court documents or public directories.

State officials said Lawrence Township Schools officials recommended against revoking Stallworth's license because the misdemeanor was "unrelated" to his teaching responsibilities. That and his retirement allowed him to keep his license.

That doesn't seem right to Marcia Riley, whose son Stallworth threatened. She wishes the district had fired him and the state taken away his teaching license. The whole situation was "swept under the rug," she said.

Riley, whose son is now a Marine serving in Iraq, said the incident at the movie theater shattered her trust in teachers.

"They're supposed to protect your children," she said. "In fact, he was putting my child in harm's way intentionally."

When school districts let teachers resign, it prevents the public from seeing records of their misconduct, which must be released if they are fired. And it becomes easier to get another teaching job if the teacher doesn't have to disclose a dismissal.

Such outcomes happen in cases more serious than Stallworth's, too. Bob James, an Indianapolis attorney, said he has handled three or four cases where school districts paid settlements to children victimized by teachers but no charges were filed, no licensing action was taken and teachers quietly quit.

He could not reveal names of teachers or districts, he said, because the settlement agreements included confidentiality clauses.

That kind of secrecy is why districts shouldn't have the last word in deciding to let teachers resign when they face termination, said Edward Eiler, a state Board of Education member and superintendent of Lafayette Schools. Eiler suggests that Indiana districts be required to report such cases for further investigation, as required in other states.

Even the risk of costly legal bills or unseemly public disputes should not prevent districts from firing teachers whose conduct merits dismissal, said Martha McCarthy, an Indiana University professor who specializes in education law.

"A lot of school leaders will take the path of least resistance," she said, "and the path of least resistance is to counsel the employee to resign."

Prospects for changes

Many support stronger system, but past reform tries didn't work

Bills have been introduced in the state legislature the past several years to make changes to the teacher licensing system, but none has been successful.

Those bills, which proposed requiring FBI background checks or ordering courts to tell state education officials about criminal teachers, appear to have become ensnared in other issues or bogged down.

The state's top educator thinks Indiana does a good job overall protecting children, but she said she'd like to see changes to the law to allow her department to issue formal public reprimands and to require courts or police to report when teachers break any law.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Suellen Reed said the state opted not to do FBI checks years ago because of the expense and difficulty of getting usable fingerprints they require.

"The overall system is protecting our children," she said. "The people that get in trouble haven't been in trouble before usually when we find them. It screens out the obvious people. That's what we want."

The state's teachers union backs strengthening background checks, adding more crimes to the list of those reported to the state and requiring school districts to fire teachers who have hurt children. The organizations representing superintendents and school boards largely agree.

"The system could be improved if the initial background check included the national databases and sex offender registries," said Dan Clark, deputy director of the Indiana State Teachers Association.

But even the groups that support strengthening Indiana's ability to screen out problem teachers want to include limits to protect teachers' rights or want to preserve local school boards' abilities to make their own decisions.

Richard Wood, the Democratic candidate for state superintendent of public instruction and a former superintendent, argues that it's largely an issue for local school boards.

"You just have to deal with those situations on a case-by-case basis," he said. "I'm not advocating any change. I would not initiate anything to make the process more lenient or anything to make it more stringent. The law we have in place is working at present."

State Rep. Robert Behning, R-Indianapolis, disagrees. His constituents, he said, would blame him just as much as the School Board if a felon ended up in a classroom.

Behning, the ranking Republican on the House Education Committee, said he was interested in proposing a bill this legislative session that would require FBI background checks for educators.

"The state definitely should have a role in it," he said. "I'm not an advocate of big government, but I believe it is the responsibility of this state. . . . I do believe that we've tried to do what was right, but I don't believe we've gone far enough."


Posted by Pebi Services President Tyra Hearns

Washington state school fires principal charged with child rape, questions arise concerning background investigations

By Diana Hefley and Bill Sheets,
The Daily Herald

The principal of a private Arlington school has been fired after being accused of child rape involving a student at the school.

Mark Evan Brown, 37, was placed on administrative leave from Highland Christian School after he was charged with third-degree child rape. School board members announced on Friday they were firing Brown after they learned more about the situation, according to a letter posted on the school's Web site.

The decision was made Thursday, said Linda Wallitner, the school's office manager.

"In the contract that Mark had with our office, he broke some of the rules, so they were able to let him go," Wallitner said. "It's not that we're saying he's innocent or guilty."

Brown is accused of encouraging a 14-year-old student to run away from home and offering her a place to stay at the school. The girl told detectives Brown had sexual contact with her at the school in a room he set up with a hide-a-bed and a television, according to court documents.

Detectives say Brown and the girl exchanged nearly 700 text messages and phone calls.

Brown pleaded not guilty to the rape charge Wednesday during a Snohomish County Superior Court hearing. He later was released from jail after posting $100,000 bond. School board secretary Kristin Sande released a statement after the hearing saying the board and the staff were standing behind Brown and planned to "continue to support him and his wife and his son through this ordeal he is going through."

In a letter released Friday, school board officials said they are cooperating with detectives and prosecutors. They also are conducting their own investigation, according to the letter.

"We are dedicated to continuing our investigation and discovering the full extent of this situation," the letter said. "As our inquiry progresses, the board will respond appropriately in a manner sensitive to the safety of our students and our employees."

School officials are obtaining a counselor to help students and families.

Brown has been principal at the school for three years. Before coming to the school, he was a wrestling coach at Concrete High School in Skagit County.

He was released from his coaching contract in 2004 after allegations surfaced that Brown had sexual contact with several female students at Concrete High School. The school district reported the allegations to officials at the state Department of Social and Health Services, who forwarded the complaint to the Skagit County Sheriff's Office. Sheriff's deputies opened an investigation. No charges were filed.

Snohomish County sheriff's detectives are revisiting those allegations as part of their investigation. They also have spoken to Brown's ex-wife, Casey West. She said she and Brown began dating in 1996 when she was 14 and he was 26.

The couple married in 2002. West filed for divorce in 2004. She said one reason for the split was her discovery of inappropriate text messages to Brown from a cheerleader at Concrete High School.

Highland is a state-approved private school and state law requires the school to do background investigations on employees. Information about a criminal investigation that doesn't result in a conviction, such as the case in Concrete, is not provided to school districts, according to Deborah Collinsworth with the Washington State Patrol. That sort of information is only shared with other police agencies.

Posted by Pebi Services President Tyra Hearns

Texas Firefighter has sexual criminal past; background investigation never revealed history

A local Texas firefighter was suspended after city officials discovered he was a registered sex offender.

Lockhart officials said they want to know why they were not told about the man's criminal history.

The Lockhart fire chief describes Mike Harris as quiet and a good firefighter. He has no disciplinary history in the four years he has worked at the department.

When city officials found out last year that Harris was a registered sex offender, they wondered how he could have slipped through the cracks. They must decide if he should stay or go.

With just 12 full-time firefighters on the payroll, the Lockhart Fire Department is like a family.

"The firefighters have a bond as a family," said Chief Jerry Doyle. "They spend a third of their life here."

But 12 is now 11.

Harris was placed on paid leave, because of his status as a registered sex offender.

"In this case, its just something that failed to show up when he was hired," Doyle said.

He added that city officials didn't learn Harris' criminal history until a city background investigation pulled it up last month.

"We had relied on the state agenices to do their work, as far as background investigations, when they license the applicant for their certification," Doyle said.

Those state agencies did do their work and knew Harris had a conviction in New York state for indecent exposure. Yet he was licensed anyway.

A representative for the Department of State Health Services said the term "registered sex offender" is applied to an array of actions, ranging from minor misdemeanors to serious felonies. Being a registered sex offender does not keep someone from getting licensed.

Doyle said he wants to know why he wasn't made aware of Harris' criminal history.

"That's part of the investigation that we're looking into is to find out why we were not made aware of it," Doyle said. Tyra Hearns President of background investigation firm Pebi Services says the problem goes further than that."This borders on grand malfecance and lack of due dilligence on the part of the background investigator. Fireman are conducting fire prevention classes in schools, giving fire house tours to school children, this should of never happened and the state agency entrusted with doing the background investigation should be ashamed."

The fire chief said he hopes to wrap up the investigation next week and get onto the business of fighting fires.

The Texas Commission on Fire Protection only recently decided that registered sex offenders could not be licensed, well after Harris received his license in 2001.

Chicago area school food worker had child sex offender past

Batavia school administrators are considering ending their contract with food-services provider Sodexho after a child sex offender was found working in two school kitchens last week.

In response to this infraction, other area school districts also are re-examining their policies on background investigations for workers in their buildings.

"We are responsible for holding our vendors responsible -- there's no way around it," said Batavia School Superintendent Jack Barshinger. "It is our responsibility to make sure our vendors comply with all of our (policies)."

Gary Gasper, 41, of the 100 block of West Chicago Street, Elgin, has been charged with being on school property as a convicted and registered sex offender, a felony, Barshinger said.

Police arrested Gasper at Rotolo Middle School Monday after a school liaison officer conducted a background investigation that revealed he had been convicted of sexually assaulting a girl in Wisconsin 18 years ago.

Illinois law forbids convicted sex offenders from being within 500 feet of a school.

Gasper, a temporary worker who had been subcontracted by Sodexho, worked in Rotolo Middle School on Nov. 5, 6 and 11, and worked for a few hours in Batavia High School on Nov. 11, Barshinger said.

Sodexho is required to run background investigations on all employees who work in the district.

"It was most definitely a breach of their contract," Barshinger said.

A district investigation, tracing Gasper's whereabouts during those three days through staff interviews, is 90 percent complete, according to Barshinger. He said the final task is reviewing videotape from the high school.

So far, Barshinger said the district has not found any individual contact between Gasper and students.

In an attempt to rectify the situation, district administrators have been meeting with Sodexho representatives daily. Barshinger said the district is demanding the company send administrators paperwork on all employees whose criminal backgrounds have been checked.

The district has not yet made a recommendation on whether to continue Sodexho's service. Barshinger said a decision could be made at the next board meeting on Nov. 27.

After learning of the incident, administrators from the West Aurora School District contacted their food-service provider, Chartwells. Superintendent James Rydland said the district asked the company to review employees' background investigations and send the district the results.

The East Aurora School District -- which also uses Sodexho -- has an agreement with the company that background investigations will be performed, said district spokesman Clayton Muhammad.

"We definitely rely on Sodexho, and we have a strong relationship with them so far," Muhammad said.