New York - State Mulls Background Check For Yeshivas

New York - The New York State Legislature is considering a bill that would permit private schools to conduct background checks on prospective employees, giving yeshivas, and other private institutions an opportunity to weed out convicted offenders before they are hired.

The bill is similar to legislation that was enacted in 2000, which now requires all the state’s public schools to fingerprint job candidates. “This bill mirrors the law for public schools, which has proven effective,” said Thomas Dunham, a spokesman for Sen. Dean Skelos (R- Rockville Centre), one of the bill’s sponsors. But unlike the law affecting public schools, the private schools law would allow institutions to opt out of running checks on prospective teachers, janitors and other school employees.

The call for legislation to keep offenders out of private schools comes in the wake of recent allegations that a yeshiva in Flatbush, Brooklyn, harbored an offender for decades. The allegations have generated a heated debate within the Jewish community about how the leadership can better protect Jewish students.

If the bill is passed, New York’s private schools would be allowed to run checks on prospective employees through the FBI’s national criminal background check system, allowing employers to learn whether a job candidate has ever been convicted of abuse, or any other crime, anywhere in the nation. In addition, legislators are currently working to amend the bill so that the new law, like the 2000 law concerning public schools, would require private schools to report allegations of abuse to the authorities.

Members of the Senate and Assembly say that the bill could come up for a vote sometime before the legislative session ends later this month.