First Student to Examine Background Check Policy

By Lauren Gregory, Chattanooga Times/Free Press, Tenn.

Feb. 11–The transportation company that provides a majority of Hamilton County’s bus drivers is re-evaluating its policy on background checks after incidents involving employees in both Chattanooga and Columbus, Ohio.

“We’ve heard the concerns of some Hamilton County school board members, and because we value their feedback and because we take our customers’ concerns very seriously, we are evaluating and reviewing our existing standards,” said First Student spokeswoman Jennifer Robinson.

Latoya Baldwin, a First Student employee, was arrested Feb. 2 and charged with statutory rape following allegations she had sex with a 15-year-old Central High School student in May 2006. She was suspended from her job as soon as the company was made aware of the charge, authorities said.

First Student had conducted a criminal background check on Ms. Baldwin before hiring her, according to Ms. Robinson. The check showed one instance of disorderly conduct. Chattanooga police records show Ms. Baldwin also was involved in two additional assaults on minors, but Ms. Robinson said the company could not have known about those incidents because they occurred after she was hired.

“They’re background checks,” she said. “They don’t go forward.”

No initial background check had been performed on the Columbus bus driver reportedly carrying a syringe of cocaine last month, according to Jennifer Brindisi, spokeswoman for the Ohio Attorney General’s Office.

Columbus Public Schools was forced to cancel classes on Jan. 25 after authorities discovered that about 50 drivers’ criminal histories had not been processed.

“One of the First Student employees had left a stack of fingerprints in a drawer, and they were never sent off,” Ms. Brindisi said. “We had feared that (problems would surface) across the state.”

Checks had been completed on employees in all other school districts, and the outstanding ones were finished in time for school to resume the next day, she said.

Ms. Robinson said she could not immediately provide specifics of First Student’s existing background check policy or elaborate on which specific elements being examined, but she noted in a prepared statement that the company is “committed to working very hard to ensure what happened in Columbus doesn’t happen again.”

There are no state-mandated regulations on the private company’s system, as it does not fall under the authority of the Tennessee Department of Education, said spokeswoman Rachel Woods.

The department requires bus drivers employed by the state’s school systems to possess a commercial driver’s license, pass an annual physical and mental examination and undergo a background check conducted by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, Ms. Wood said.

However, she said, “I’m not sure how it would be handled by the private company.”

She surmised that the responsibility to monitor contract employers “would be at the local level.”

Wayne Hendrix, transportation director for the Hamilton County Department of Education, said he does not need to check up on First Student because “It’s standard practice (to monitor criminal histories) in any transportation company.

“It’s just a requirement. It doesn’t have to be in writing,” Mr. Hendrix said. “They’re supposed to be professionals in their field, and they run by the book. I feel confident that if there was a law to do it more often, they would do it more often.”

Central High School Parent-Teacher Association President William Madison said he wishes that were the case.

“All parents are concerned about it,” Mr. Madison said. “You want the kids to be safe.”

Mr. Madison said he felt the incident involving Ms. Baldwin and a Central student likely was “isolated” and “one of those things that just slipped by,” but he wishes First Student would recheck employees periodically in the future.

“I think they could have followed it up more closely,” he said. “I would like to see them follow up year to year.”

Jerry Partlow, a business development manager for the company, said Thursday that First Student does not plan to conduct additional background checks but that it would be prepared to perform such checks as often as the school board requests.

First Student carries nearly 2 million students to and from school each day in America and Canada, according to the company’s Web site. The company’s contract to run 163 of Hamilton County’s 222 school bus routes expires June 30, and it has submitted a $40.6 million bid to extend that agreement another four years.

First Student’s parent company, FirstGroup, recently acquired Laidlaw International Inc. Laidlaw Educational Services bid $37.7 million for the four-year Hamilton County contract.

At a school board meeting Thursday, several board members expressed preference for Durham School Services, which bid $38.5 million for the contract.

First Student is confident in its record, however, Ms. Robinson said.

“When it comes to safety, if we weren’t doing a whole lot right, our customers wouldn’t keep coming back, and our customer retention rate is 97 percent,” she wrote in an e-mail.

Staff Writer Christina Cooke contributed to this story.

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