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Subcommittee debates scope of background checks, volunteers and forms
Summary
Members discussed updating CORI language to a broader 'background checks' model policy, clarified who must be checked (all employees and anyone unsupervised with students), and agreed that administrative forms should be managed outside the policy manual to allow timely updates.
The Southbridge policy subcommittee spent substantial time April 16 on the district’s CORI and background-check rules, probing who must undergo criminal-record screening and where operational forms should reside.
Tracy Novick of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees recommended renaming the locally referenced CORI policy to a broader "background checks" policy and incorporating regulatory language (a dash R) recommended by the Department of Criminal Justice Information Services. When asked who must be CORI checked, Novick said, “All employees. And anybody that is coming into the schools that are going to be around students. In like a in an instructional environment where there's a potential that they're alone or there's not supervision of another district employee.”
The committee clarified that some volunteers and community partners—such as parents who would be unsupervised with students on field trips—would be covered by background checks if they are in positions lacking district supervision. Novick cautioned that putting operational forms and exhibits (dash Es) into the policy manual can hinder timely administrative action and recommended that waivers, trip-specific liability forms and other mutable documents be maintained administratively. “Forms don't go in the policy manual,” she said, noting forms change frequently and administrative agility is needed for events such as the early-college WooSox trip cited in the discussion.
No formal vote was required to adopt the recommendation that forms be removed from the manual; the subcommittee approved removing dash E exhibits and will present the edited manual to the full committee.
