ChoicePoint And SchoolMatch Team Up To Make America's Schools Safer

ChoicePoint Inc. and SchoolMatch have introduced SchoolCheck, a pre-employment background screening service specifically for school personnel. SchoolCheck is designed to help schools verify job applicant information on prospective teachers, administrators, janitorial and maintenance staff, bus drivers and other individuals employed by schools who have direct access to children.

SchoolCheck is the combination of the two companies' efforts to develop a reliable screening tool for schools to make better informed hiring decisions. In addressing the growing problem of personnel screening, the system combines ChoicePoint's pre-employment and background screening expertise with SchoolMatch's strength in school-based auditing and consulting.

Dr. Donald R. Thompson, past president of the American Association of School Administrators, says SchoolCheck will help satisfy an ongoing national goal of improving the safety of schools. "We are all too aware of incidents where job applicants misrepresented themselves at the time of employment and then violated the public trust," he notes.

SchoolCheck offers several of ChoicePoint's pre-employment screening components, including Employment Verification, Criminal Record checks, Motor Vehicle Record checks and other public record searches.

"Our corporate mission is to provide our clients with valuable information in order to help them make better business decisions; in this case better hiring decisions," explains David Cook, vice president of ChoicePoint's Employment Services. "By merging our nationwide pre-employment screening expertise with SchoolMatch's knowledge of and reputation among boards of education and school districts we are able to extend that mission to include the safety and welfare of our nation's children and their schools."

"Through our work with school systems around the country, we found a pressing need for a better way to screen people who have direct contact with children," explains William R. Mason, Jr.,

SchoolMatch vice president and former president of the Ohio Association of School Personnel Administrators. "Our research indicates safety is a top concern of parents and school leaders across the nation. Bringing ChoicePoint's expertise together with our own, we can help create a safer campus and classroom environment for our nation's schools."