Teachers behaving badly

Sex with students.

Buying drugs from kids.

Writing pornographic stories about children on school computers.

Utah schools have been investigating a rash of misconduct by their employees.

The activity raises questions as to how the public school system screens its hires.

Education leaders insist they go as far as the law allows to ensure children are kept safe and say the system is working well.

But they also believe the system has a crack that could let undesirables seep in. Just how to seal it, however, is up for debate.

State law requires prospective and license-lapsing teachers to be fingerprinted and undergo a criminal background check, either through colleges of education or the State Office of Education.

Information goes to the Utah Bureau of Criminal Identification. The BCI runs names and birthdates through a state criminal system for active warrants in Utah and across the country. Fingerprints are run through the Western Identification Network, which includes criminal databases in Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming, then forwards them to the FBI.

BCI checks done for the State Office of Education include expunged records, which could include DUIs and some felonies, though typically not serious sex offenses, BCI manager Alice Erickson said.

Licenses are printed once the checks come back, the State Office of Education reports.

But other school employees are treated differently.

Substitute teachers are not checked by the FBI, said George Welch, human resources executive director in Jordan School District, the state's largest.

Volunteers are checked only if districts determine they have "significant unsupervised access" to students.

"We certainly are trying to be as vigilant as we can. I think in our district, we go, in some ways, overboard in fingerprinting," Welch said. "I think it is some deterrent. But it is my belief if a person has a propensity to be around young children, they'll find ways to get around that."

Slipping the system