Background checks urged for college staff

Faculty and staff at Utah's universities and colleges could be subject to the same stringent background checks as teachers in the public school system.

A bill to require those checks for about half of all current employees and new hires at Utah higher education institutions passed out of the House unanimously Thursday and now heads back to the Rules Committee to determine if the Senate will also get a vote on the bill.

"We have students leaving our high school settings who are 17 and 18 years old, and they are going to university settings where there are no mechanisms to check who is teaching with these students," said Rep. Ronda Rudd Menlove, R-Garland, who is sponsoring HB196.

The measure would cost about $690,000 in its first year to perform checks on roughly half of currently employees with about $54,000 needed each year after that to check roughly half of all new hires.

The cost for the checks may be passed on to the potential employee.

Most of those checks would be done in employment areas that have contact with students under 21 years old, Menlove said.

Ultimately, the State Board of Regents would determine exactly how the policy would be implemented and which areas would be subject to background checks.