Massachusetts schools conducting employee fingerprinting to comply with 2012 law

Teachers and other school personnel who were hired at schools in Taunton, Massachusetts prior to January 2013 have about a year and a half to submit their fingerprints to a national criminal database in adherence with a law approved by former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, according to a report by the Taunton Daily Gazette.

The 2012 law, which was recently discussed at a monthly, roundtable meeting of the Superintendents’ Advisory Council, requires public, private and parochial school personnel to submit fingerprints before the start of the 2016-17 academic year.

To conduct the fingerprint enrollment process, the state’s Executive Office of Public Safety and Security hired MorphoTrust USA.

The Chapter 459 law requires the fingerprints in order to create a national database for all personnel working in schools, including those on contract, who might have “direct and unmonitored contact with children.”

Upon signing the act into law in January 2013, all newly hired K-12 school employees were ordered to submit fingerprints for the 2013-14 school year.

Before passing the law, Massachusetts was the only state in the country that was not conducting national fingerprint-based criminal history checks of school employees through the FBI’s national, criminal-history database.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  fingerprint database  |  legislation  |  Massachusetts  |  MorphoTrust USA