In the wake of a middle-school teacher's being charged with felony sexual misconduct with a student, the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County school board set aside $30,000 last night to conduct new background checks on all of its employees.
"We have a weakness in our system," said the board's chairman, Donny Lambeth. "I think we need to do them all."
Earlier this month, Ralph David Surridge, a 57-year-old teacher at Mineral Springs Middle School, was charged with 10 counts of felony sexual misconduct, and with possession of firearms by a felon.
Forsyth County sheriff's deputies began investigating Surridge after a school-system administrator reported allegations of an inappropriate relationship between a teacher and a student at Mineral Springs. Deputies turned up a 1985 conviction for embezzlement that had been missed when the school system did a background check on Surridge when he was hired seven years ago.
After Surridge was charged, school officials talked about doing random checks on 100 employees to see whether other discrepancies turned up. Last night, though, board members decided that they would rather check out all 8,000 employees, as well as substitute teachers.
"It's kind of like a peace-of-mind issue," Superintendent Don Martin said. "I think people's confidence level was shaken."
The school system already pays a company, Public Data Works, about $99,000 a year to do about 1,000 checks on potential employees and volunteers.
To do new checks on everyone, the company offered the school system a special rate of $1.25 per employee for traces on Social Security numbers, $2 for nationwide criminal checks, and no charge for in-state checks. Including substitute teachers, Martin estimated the total cost at about $30,000.
Because of the economic downturn, the school system's budget was already incredibly tight. Kerry Crutchfield, the school system's finance director, told board members that it would be possible to get the money from fees that private contractors pay to use school facilities for after-school programs.
Tripp Jeffers, the president of the Forsyth County Association of Educators, said that having to spend that much money is unfortunate, but he understands the intent.
"It's the job of the school system to make sure kids are safe," Jeffers said.
In order to do the checks, the school system will have to get consent forms from employees hired before the current procedures were in place.
Martin readily acknowledged that some long-time employees might be bothered by having checks done on them but said that he hoped that things could be worked out so that people would feel OK about it.
Checks will not go forward until school officials report to the Nov. 10 school-board meeting about how they plan to proceed.
kunderwood@wsjournal.com
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