Louisiana educators will soon have to undergo a criminal background check before they can receive their teaching license in a move intended to make it more difficult for would-be teachers with prior convictions to slip through the cracks.
Starting January 1, anyone seeking to obtain or renew a teaching certification within the state must pass a criminal background check conducted by State Police. Today, background checks are typically only conducted when teachers apply for new jobs.
The upshot is that new teachers — and the schools looking to hire them — will have to wait for the state to complete their background check and issue their license before they can start working in classrooms. Any delay in that process, which the state education department will oversee, could leave schools with unfilled teaching positions.
"If a classroom is vacant, the system is going to be waiting on us for the turnaround," said state Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley during a meeting with superintendents this month. "There are things that are going to be beyond our control."
The new policy is the result of a state law passed in 2023. While the law does not require school districts to run their own background checks on new hires who undergo the state's criminal background check, state officials are advising districts to do so.
During a presentation before the Superintendents’ Advisory Council earlier this month, Arthur Joffrion with the Louisiana Department of Education told the committee that the changes stemmed from a 2019 FBI audit that determined state organizations should use more than one background check for hiring and certification.
He also said the department recommends that districts conduct their own background checks on educators who transfer to their school system from another, even if those individuals underwent background checks for their previous teaching positions. In some cases, districts have uncovered disqualifying convictions that earlier background checks missed, Joffrion explained.
“We are strongly suggesting that any new individual who comes to your system from another, after that initial certification, you continue to require that background check,” he said. “It’s protection for you, it’s protection for your system and protection, most importantly, for our students.”
Joffrion said the current price for a background check is $40 and that it will be the applicant's responsibility to pay.
The Louisiana Federation of Teachers has opposed legislation requiring teachers to pay for additional background checks, saying on their website that while background checks are important for the safety of students, the changes would require educators to shoulder an unnecessary financial burden.
Now teachers will have to pay out-of-pocket for up to three background checks, the union said: before they start as student teachers, when they are certified and before they are hired.
Cynthia Posey, the organization’s legislative and political director, testified before the Senate Education Committee in 2022 against legislation requiring teachers to pay for additional background checks.
She argued that the requirements may lead to backlogs and become “a nightmare” for school districts, adding that Louisiana could change its laws to accommodate using one background check.
“We support fair and rigorous background checks. They are imperative to the safety of our children,” she said. “Our concern is there could be a better way to do it.”
While the new law could help to keep people with criminal records out of the classroom, some school leaders fear it could also slow down the hiring process and place an undue burden on districts.
In 2022, state officials said delays in the processing of criminal background checks for teachers, which a Louisiana State Police spokesman blamed on a software issue, were aggravating Louisiana’s educator shortage.
At the committee meeting earlier this month, Brumley assured local school officials that the situation will be temporary.
“I don’t think you’re going to have multiple background checks forever,” he said. “It’s just in the interim, because moving forward, the one-stop-shop of licensing and background checks will be the department [of education].”
There have been instances in recent years in which Louisiana teachers have been found to have concerning criminal histories that districts failed to detect prior to them being hired. For example, in 2021, a background check returned weeks after a man started teaching at a Baton Rouge school found that he had been convicted in 2020 of multiple felonies and spent 10 months in prison.