The deadline for employees of the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County school system to sign a release authorizing the system to do criminal-record checks on them has been extended to Dec. 14.
In October, Ralph David Surridge, 57, a teacher at Mineral Springs Middle School, was charged with 10 counts of felony sexual misconduct and with possession of firearms by a felon. When law-enforcement officers investigated the reports of sexual misconduct by Surridge, they turned up a 1985 conviction for embezzlement that had been missed when the school system did a background check before hiring him.
Because of that, school decided to spend $30,000 to check the criminal records of all 8,000 employees and 1,000 substitutes to see whether anything else turned up.
At the Nov. 10 meeting of the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Board of Education, school officials said that they planned to send out release forms by this past Monday with the requirement that everyone sign the releases by Dec. 7.
Today, Superintendent Don Martin sent an e-mail to school employees saying that it would still be a few more days before releases were ready and that the deadline would be extended until Dec. 14.
Up until then, employees have a grace period to report any previously unreported criminal charges and convictions.
As Martin put it in the e-mail: "If you have failed to notify us in the past, you may do so prior to December 14th without any negative repercussions from not reporting. If however, you have been convicted of a crime, there may be negative consequences."
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