An Administrator's Guide to California Private School Law

Chapter 3 – Hiring

candidates. Regardless of the number of background investigations performed, schools should not make any conditional offers of employment until after the investigations are completed and reviewed. 128 D. C ONDUCTING A B ACKGROUND C HECK 1. V ERIFY I NFORMATION A BOUT A PPLICANTS A school must attempt to learn as much as possible about an applicant (within legal limits) to fully evaluate the applicant’s suitability for employment. At a minimum, the background investigator (who is often the division head, head of school, human resources manager or business manager) should seek and verify the following information about applicants:  Dates of employment  Job duties and positions held  Quality of work  Quantity of work  Ability to work with others  Ability to take direction  Leadership skills  Attendance  Behavior  Any performance problems  Whether the applicant was ever asked to resign  Reason(s) former employment ended  Any convictions This is not an exhaustive list, but it includes topics a school should consider before hiring any applicant. 2. I NFORMATION A VAILABLE F ROM P UBLIC S OURCES In conducting background checks on applicants, many schools resort to publicly available information, including online resources. “Googling” the name of an applicant to search for entries in blogs, or social networking websites like Twitter or Facebook has become a common practice for many schools. This type of online background check does not generally put a school at legal risk because the information obtained online is publicly available, and in many instances it is posted by the job applicant on his or her social network sites. Schools, however, may choose to employ one of the following approaches to its online background checks:  Provide notice to the job applicant prior to searching;

An Administrator’s Guide to California Private School Law ©2019 Liebert Cassidy Whitmore 58