Wellesley School Committee proposes stricter CORI background checks for prospective employees

By Evan Allen, Globe Correspondent

The Wellesley School Committee last night proposed a new Criminal Offender Record Information policy designed to close gaps in how the district conducts background checks on prospective employees.

The plan, drafted by School Committee vice chairwoman Diane Campbell and member Ilissa Povich, would expand the scope of individuals subject to CORI reports, add an option for consultation with the police department on CORI interpretation, and allow the school department to go beyond the paper CORI directly to the courts for information.

The School Committee did not vote to adopt the new policy last night. It will be available on the district’s website, and the board will be taking public comments and suggestions until it votes on the new policy at its next meeting on Jan. 10.

Last night’s revision comes in response to continued scrutiny of the district’s CORI policy following the October arrest of Gino Lister, a custodian at the Wellesley Middle School who is accused of stealing more than $20,000 worth of Apple computer products and student-made jewelry from the school.

According to Framingham District Court documents, Lister had a previous criminal record. He was charged in 1998 with assault and battery, and in 2000 with unarmed robbery, breaking and entering in the nighttime, and larceny over $250. Both sets of charges were continued without a finding and eventually dismissed.

Assistant Superintendent Salvatore Petralia, whose office handles CORI checks, addressed Lister’s criminal record in a brief statement during the CORI presentation.

“The press has reported that a former employee had pled guilty to a crime, which is not consistent with the information the district received in the CORI report,” he said. “Assuming these newspaper reports were correct, and had we had the benefit of that information at the time, the individual in question would not have been hired.”

The Globe has not reported that Lister pleaded guilty to any crime. Petralia refused to respond to a request to clarify whether he was correcting false press reports or saying that hiring Lister was a mistake.

Schools in Massachusetts, said Wellesley Deputy Police Chief William Brooks, have access to “full CORI,” which includes open or pending criminal cases. They can also access non-convictions on criminal charges, such as not guilty dispositions or dismissals, dating back to an individual’s 17th birthday.

The School Committee proposed three changes to its CORI policy.

First, Povich said, the new policy requires that the school run CORI checks on anyone who provides any kind of school-related transportation, as well as all sub-contractors and laborers. The old policy, she said, allowed for this information to be gathered, but didn’t require it.

Secondly, the new policy will involve reviewing CORIs that raise concerns with police.

“CORIs can be confusing to read,” said Povich.

A CORI shows arraignment date, the arresting police department, the court, the charges and the disposition, said Brooks. The acronyms and the meaning behind the legal language can be difficult to decipher, he said.

“Some of it needs a little interpretation by somebody in the system,” said Brooks.

He said that the police can’t do additional background research on job applicants. “Our role would be to help interpret a record,” he said.

And finally, the new policy will allow members of the school department to go directly to the courts to check out information contained in applicants’ CORIs.

“Some dispositions such as a continuation without a finding and dismissal do not tell the whole story,” said Brooks.

Information contained within court documents can help shed light on the bare bones of the CORI.

A criminal record does not automatically bar a person from employment in a school, and deciding what information in a job applicant’s CORI disqualifies them from a job is not a mathematically precise judgment.

“I don’t think there’s a black and white line drawn,” said Brooks.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has warned employers against using criminal records as a hard and fast bar to employment, citing possible violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

“Nationally, Blacks and Hispanics are convicted in numbers which are disproportionate to Whites, and… barring people from employment based on their conviction records will therefore disproportionately exclude these groups,” according to a 1987 Policy Statement from the EEOC. In a 1990 Policy Guidance notice, the EEOC concluded that the use of arrest records as an absolute bar to employment was similarly exclusionary.

Wellesley’s current CORI policy, available online, allows the district to deny employment based on relevance of the crime to the position sought, the nature of the work to be performed, time since the conviction, age of the candidate at the time of the offense, seriousness and specific circumstances of the offense, the number of offenses and whether the applicant has pending charges.

Lister, now 35, would have been 22 at the time of his first arrest, and 25 at the time of his second arrest.

Wellesley resident Michael Kiernan spoke at last night’s meeting before the new CORI policy was discussed and said that it was “still a little disturbing to me that we had a situation in the middle school where we put 1,100 students in a dangerous situation” by hiring Lister. But after the policy was discussed, he said he felt satisfied by the changes the School Committee has proposed.

“They’re adding additional steps to ensure that there’s nothing hidden,” he said. “They clearly defined a process – the old and the new.”

The School Committee will be seeking feedback on its proposed CORI policy for the next couple weeks. Residents with comments can email school_committee@wellesley.k12.ma.us.

Evan Allen can be reached at evannn524@gmail.com.