托儿机构和教育机构的背景调查进展是今年就业筛选行业最大和最普遍的趋势之一。教师、校长、校车司机、教练员、志愿者、访客、日托工作者，以及其他各种与儿童或青少年经常接触的人，都受到越来越严格和警惕的就业背景调查政策的影响。由联邦、州和市政府以及个别学校和学校董事会制定的新要求都是努力使学校和日托中心为孩子们提供更安全的场所以及为潜在危险罪犯提供零容忍环境的努力的一部分。
但是，当这种情况下的老师是他们正在教育的学生的父母时呢？这就是俄亥俄州参议员提出的一项新提议的立法——确切地说是参议院第 248 号法案——要求父母接受社会服务调查才能获得教育自己孩子的许可。
社会服务机构将采访有兴趣开始家庭学校程序的父母 - 以及希望让他们的孩子参加互联网或面向计算机的教育计划的父母。然后，面试官会向学区负责人推荐该学区负责人，该学区负责人应该在学生本来上学的学区，是否应该让孩子免于传统的公共教育或拒绝在家上学的权利。
由民主党州参议员卡普里卡法罗提议，参议院第 248 号法案——也被称为“泰迪法”——现在将提交参议院委员会批准和进一步讨论。今年早些时候因严重头部外伤而去世的男孩激发了这项法案。泰迪和他的双胞胎弟弟被他们母亲的男朋友严重虐待。
到男孩去世时，他已经表现出虐待的迹象很长一段时间了，以至于从祖父母到邻居再到老师的每个人都试图向儿童和社会服务机构投诉。社会服务部门并没有将男孩从危险的家庭环境中带走，而是站在一边，让他的母亲把他从公立学校拉出来。然后，她开始在家上学，以使他的虐待迹象不被窥探。但男朋友一直在折磨和虐待这个小男孩，这种虐待最终导致了他的死亡。母亲因危害儿童被判入狱 15 年；而男朋友因谋杀被判无期徒刑。
对孩子死亡的愤怒最终导致了卡法罗的参议院法案，她希望这将有助于保护孩子们在未来免受同样危险的家庭学校环境的影响。然而，该法案的批评者——包括家庭学校法律辩护协会和俄亥俄州的基督教家庭教育者——称该立法存在误导和违宪。在某些情况下，该法案基本上可以赋予社会服务组织强制父母将孩子送到公立学校的权利。对于其他人来说，这只会造成官僚主义的头痛，完全不鼓励在家上学。
迈克尔·唐纳利和家庭学校法律辩护协会甚至将参议院第 248 号法案称为“有史以来最糟糕的家庭学校法”，唐纳利向俄亥俄州看门狗解释说，该法案将花费社会服务和家长大量的时间和金钱，并最终解决不了问题。Donnelly 认为，Teddy Foltz-Tedesco 案件的疏忽首先是由社会服务部门造成的，当时他们没有注意到男孩的老师、邻居和家人的投诉和举报。
此外，该法案还可能面临家庭学校家长的争议，由于欺凌、危险或腐败教师或学校枪击事件的增长趋势，他们中的许多人实际上将他们的孩子从公立学校开除。虽然一些家长当然不应该被允许让孩子在家上学，但纳税人的钱可以更好地集中在让公立学校更安全的地方，无论是通过刑事调查、虐待儿童筛查还是性犯罪者调查——所有这些都可以通过背景调查获得.com – 或在欺凌指控的情况下迅速采取行动。
Background check advances for childcare institutions and educational organizations have been among the biggest and most prevalent trends in the employment screening industry this year. Teachers, principals, school bus drivers, coaches, volunteers, visitors, daycare workers, and all manner of other individuals who see frequent contact with kids or teenagers are being subjected to increasingly strict and vigilant employment background check policies. The new requirements, instituted by federal, state, and city governments – as well as by individual schools and school boards – are all part of an effort to make schools and daycares safer places for kids and zero-tolerance environments for potentially dangerous criminals.
But what about when the teacher in the situation is the parent of the student whom they are educating? That’s the question an Ohio senator is posing with a newly proposed piece of legislation – Senate Bill 248, to be exact – that would require parents to undergo a social services investigation in order to receive permission to educate their own children.
The social services agency would interview parents interested in beginning a home school procedure – as well as parents wanting to admit their children in an Internet or computer-oriented educational program. The interviewer would then recommend to a school district superintendent, supposedly in the district where the student would otherwise attend school, as to whether the child should be excused from traditional public education or denied the right to homeschool.
Proposed by Capri Cafaro, a Democratic state senator, Senate Bill 248 – which has also called “Teddy’s Law” – will now go to the Senate committee for approval and further discussion. A boy who passed away as a result of severe head trauma earlier this year, inspired the bill. Teddy and his younger twin brothers were abused heavily by their mother’s boyfriend.
By the time the boy passed away, he had been showing signs of abuse for quite sometime, so much that everyone from grandparents to neighbors to teachers tried to lodge complaints with child and social services. Rather than remove the boy from his dangerous home environment, social services stood aside and let his mother pull him out of public school. She then began a home school regimen in order to keep the signs of his abuse hidden from prying eyes. But the boyfriend was torturing and abusing the little boy, and that abuse eventually led to his death. The mother got 15 years in prison for child endangerment; while the boy friend got a life sentence for murder.
The outrage over the child's death culminated in Cafaro’s Senate bill, which she hopes will help protect children from being subjected to similarly dangerous home school environments in the future. However, the bill’s critics – which include the Home School Legal Defense Association and the Christian Home Educators of Ohio – have called the legislation misguided and unconstitutional. In some cases, the bill could essentially give social services organizations the right to force parents to send their kids to public schools. For others, it would merely create a bureaucratic headache that would discourage homeschooling altogether.
Michael Donnelly and the Home School Legal Defense Association have even gone as far as to call Senate Bill 248 “the worst ever home school law,” with Donnelly explaining to Watchdog Ohio that the bill would cost social services and parents a lot of time and money, and would ultimately not solve the problem. Donnelly believes that the oversight in the case of Teddy Foltz-Tedesco was made by social services in the first place when they did not heed complaints and reports made by the boy’s teachers, neighbors, and family members.
Furthermore, the bill will also likely face controversy from home school parents, many of whom actually remove their children from public schools due to growing trends of bullying, dangerous or corrupt teachers, or school shootings. While some parents should certainly not be permitted to home school their children, taxpayer dollars could be better focused on making public schools safer places to be, whether through criminal checks, child abuse screenings, and sex offender checks – all of which are available through backgroundchecks.com – or by taking swift action in the case of bullying accusations.
