Superintendent asks legislature for $2.25 million for RAPBACK and seeks to eliminate costly resident educator performative assessment

Superintendent Paul Kraft told the State Board of Education that the board office is seeking new legislative funding to cover rising costs tied to the RAPBACK background-check program, and he proposed eliminating a costly performative assessment in the resident educator program as a budget savings measure.

Kraft said the board now issues almost 490,000 credentials to about 364,000 individuals and that referrals to the Office of Professional Conduct rose from about 13,160 in 2019 to roughly 22,000 in 2023. He reported RAPBACK — the fingerprint-based background-notification system — now covers about 460,000 individuals, a cohort that has expanded to include nonlicensed employees such as custodians and bus drivers under recent law changes (House Bill 433 was referenced in the hearing). That expansion, Kraft said, has increased the board’s annual RAPBACK costs to roughly $5 per person and the board requested $2,250,000 from the legislature to cover…