news-record.com

WINSTON-SALEM (MCT) — Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools will conduct criminal background checks on a randomly selected group of employees after discovering that, during the hiring process, the school system missed a prior conviction of a middle-school teacher who was charged last weekend with sexual misconduct with a student.

Superintendent Don Martin said Tuesday that school officials would start with a group of between 100 and 150 employees, and could expand the background checks to all employees if they find discrepancies.

"I don't think we want to overreact," Martin said. "We want to start with a sampling."

The school system conducts background checks on all employees and volunteers, but it missed the conviction of Ralph David Surridge, a drama teacher at Mineral Springs Middle School, when he was hired seven years ago. He served six months in prison on a felony embezzlement conviction in 1985.

Surridge, 57, was arrested over the weekend on 10 counts related to sexual misconduct. Tthe Forsyth County Sheriff's Office said that the incidents that led to the charges took place over the past month and involved a female student.

"We believe this is an anomaly, but we want to make sure that's the case," said Theo Helm, a spokesman for the school system.

At the time of Surridge's hiring, the school system's human-resources department conducted background checks in-house, using computer records from the N.C. Administrative Offices of the Courts.

In the past few years, the school system has switched to hiring private companies to do the criminal background checks. The current vendor, Public Data Works, was hired about a year ago, Helm said.

Officials plan to run a random sample of full- and part-time employees' identifications through the Public Data Works system to determine if anyone hired under previous methods had crimes that were similarly missed, Helm said.

"Methods available 20 years ago were different," he said. "It's a lot easier to do now."

The school system has about 8,000 employees, Helm said.

All job applicants are asked to disclose if they have ever committed a crime, Martin said. Any employee charged with a crime is required to report it to school officials. Martin said Tuesday that the school system would fire anyone found to have an undisclosed conviction because that would amount to falsifying their record.

The details of the plan will be outlined at Tuesday's school board meeting, and final results are expected to be presented at the school board's Nov. 10 meeting, Helm said.

Martin said on Monday that a criminal-background check on Surridge showed that he was found not guilty on a charge of forgery and uttering.