43
Hathorn toughens policy on background checks
Photo
Youngstown City Schools Superintendent Connie Hathorn
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
City school district policy requires state and federal background checks before any person comes into the schools to work with children.
In one case, the policy wasn’t followed.
Superintendent Connie Hathorn said he’ll enact a policy whereby anyone working in the schools near children — volunteers or those working for an agency or contractor — must fill out an application that will go through the district’s central office.
That application will include verification that background checks were completed and reviewed.
Hathorn’s change follows discovery that a man who worked as a mentor at McGuffey Elementary School through a nonprofit group had a 2004 federal drug conviction.
That man, Shawntel Patton, 39, of Poland, was indicted last month in federal court — one of 28 people accused of involvement in a drug ring with links to Mexican drug cartels.
Rachael Smith, McGuffey’s principal, selected the organization, CARE. Inc. — Children are Reunited Everyday — after reviewing the program components. CARE mentors children with social-emotional issues, Smith said.
She acknowledged that her husband, Randolph Smith, is one of CARE’s founders but said he stopped working with the organization in August, before the start of the school year and before CARE was selected to work in the school.
Randolph Page also said that he no longer works with CARE.
Antonio Page, one of the organization’s founders who still works in the group, said he conducted a background check of Patton that didn’t reveal the 2004 federal drug conviction. Page told The Vindicator earlier this week he did the check using a website for background checks.
School-district policy, which follows state law, requires a criminal background check including information from the state Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation and the FBI of each person employed by a private company under contract with the school board to provide essential school services.
At a school board meeting Thursday, board member Michael Murphy suggested that the board’s policy committee should review policies regarding people working in the schools through outside companies.
“We should ensure that background checks are being done by our people,” he said.
The check performed by Page, which listed an assault from 1993 and a theft by deception charge from 1998, was given to the principal. She said those didn’t cause her concern and cited the amount of time that has passed.
Smith said Patton was never alone with children while he was at the school. The mentoring he provided was conducted either in the school office or in a classroom with a teacher present.
She said CARE’s work was showing positive results with the fourth- and fifth-graders with whom CARE members worked.
“It appeared that the kids we were trying to target were not coming to the office and not being referred as much as before,” the principal said.
CARE was paid $8,800 in Title I money, funds aimed at economically disadvantaged children.
Page told the newspaper earlier this week that he would repay about $5,500 of that sum to the school district. The remaining $3,300 already had been paid in salaries, he said.
After Smith learned of Patton’s previous conviction and recent arrest, she ended CARE’s work at McGuffey. Page has said that was a mutual agreement.
“I had already decided to do that whether it was mutual or not,” Smith added.