Criminal Background Check Law Leaves Some School Board Members in Limbo

Scores of school board members have missed the cutoff date for a new law requiring local school board members to undergo criminal background checks, leaving themselves -- and to some degree their boards -- in a kind of administrative limbo.

According to the state and the New Jersey School Boards Association, more than 300 out of nearly 5,300 board members and charter school trustees statewide did not meet the December 31 deadline to register and complete the background check. They have been stripped of their elected or appointed positions, as the law requires.

"There are no exceptions for board members/trustees to continue to serve without having submitted to the criminal history record check," said a statement from the state Department of Education yesterday.

But whether board members will be reinstated once they've submitted to the background check is unclear.

"We don't know that yet," said Frank Belluscio, spokesman for the School Boards Association.

Enacted last spring amid some controversy, the law had elected officials rushing to meet the year-end deadline. As of October, thousands had not yet registered, and state and association officials launched an unprecedented campaign to notify them.

Still, the law did end the school board careers of at least a dozen members, permanently disqualified for having a conviction on their records, according to the data provided by the association. There is no appeal provision in the law, other than to the accuracy of the records.

The law disqualifies board members or trustees who have been convicted of any of a long list of felonies or other crimes at any point in their adult lives, including most violent or drug-related offenses. It is similar to a law in place for school employees.

In a lengthy statement, the department made a distinction between those "disqualified" from serving due to past convictions, and those now "ineligible" due to not completing the background check.

"Any school board member who did not submit to a criminal history background check by December 31 is ineligible to serve on the board," said the statement from Richard Vespucci, a department spokesman.

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