1 November 2023
TOPEKA, Kan. (KSNT) — Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach is recommending that school districts conduct fingerprint and criminal history investigations of all school employees every five years.
The recommendation comes after a report from the Office of the Medicaid Inspector General found nearly one-third of Kansas school employees who provide Medicaid services didn’t have proof of completed background checks.
On Tuesday, the Office of the Medicaid Inspector General, which is overseen by Kobach’s office, issued a letter to Kobach detailing the findings of a School Reimbursements Interim Report. The report found that 31% or 72 of the 231 sampled didn’t have proof of background checks.
The report set out to answer three questions:
Does the Kansas Department of Health and Environment have an effective system for processing and tracking school-based Medicaid FFS claim reimbursements?
Does the KDHE have adequate policies and procedures that promote efficient school-based Medicaid programs?
Does the KDHE or the Kansas State Department of Education have sufficient oversight processes to ensure Individual Education Plans are complete and support medical necessity when services are billed to Medicaid?
School providers are licensed paraprofessionals who work with students to assist in Medicaid enrollment and receiving medical services, according to the report. The report sampled 17 of the 287 public schools in Kansas. The findings indicated that 1,157 providers may be working without a background check.
“We did not find any state-level requirements for other school employees to have background checks,” the report said. “This includes other employees, such as therapists, coaches, paraprofessionals, bus drivers, cooks, and janitorial workers.”
The report found that teachers were only required to have a single background check. Three teachers in the report’s sample group have not had background checks since 1997 and 1998.
“It is reasonable to assume there are teachers in daily contact with students that have not had any type of background check done in 10-20 years,” the report reads.
As a result of the findings, the Office of the Medicaid Inspector General recommends all school districts confirm that all employees have background checks on file, all employees have fingerprint-based criminal history background checks done regularly every five years, and make a five-year fingerprint-based background check a statutory requirement for all schools.
“Regular background checks are routine for workers in the medical community and in many functions of government,” Medicaid Inspector General Steven Anderson said. “It is logical that Kansans would want to ensure individuals who work directly with children are properly cleared. It would be inexcusable to allow someone convicted of a serious crime to have unsupervised access to children when a simple criminal history check could have prevented a potential problem.”