Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) has hired the global law firm Morgan, Lewis and Bockius to conduct an investigation into potential “personnel wrongdoing” by district staff related to a backlog of nearly 13,000 outdated employee background checks, MCPS officials told Bethesda Today on Wednesday.
The officials said the cost of the investigation would not be known until it is completed. The district is already spending more than $1 million to resolve the issue revealed by a scathing August report by the Montgomery County inspector general’s office.
The Aug. 4 report released by the county inspector general’s office found that nearly 13,000 MCPS employees had outdated criminal history checks, and almost 5,000 individuals who may have unsupervised access to students hadn’t undergone a Child Protective Services (CPS) check. Also, some contractors and volunteers with unsupervised access to students had begun work prior to the completion of criminal history checks, according to the report.
In mid-August, the school board approved an $800,000 contract with All American Protective Services, a fingerprinting service with locations in Rockville, Germantown, Bethesda and Silver Spring, to fingerprint its employees.
On Sept. 25, the school board approved a $250,000 contract with BithGroup Technologies, a Baltimore based IT and hardware company to provide additional mobile finger printing units. According to a Sept. 25 presentation to the school board, the district expects to...
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