Superintendent Taylor told the Montgomery County Board of Education on Sept. 25 that MCPS is moving rapidly to close gaps in background screening identified by the county inspector general.

"I am so disappointed to tell you, that we're even in this place," Superintendent Taylor said, adding the district had begun immediate steps to refingerprint employees hired before 2019 and enroll them in the federal Rap Back continuous-monitoring program.

The update described four parallel actions: refingerprinting staff not yet in Rap Back; using the Maryland child-protective-services portal to resolve missing CPS clearances; strengthening school-level procedures for screening volunteers and contractors; and drafting clearer, codified policy and regulation so screening responsibilities and suitability-review criteria are unambiguous.

The systemwide effort involves MCPS central offices and a multiagency partnership with the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). DHHS director Dr. James Bridgers told the board his office has been meeting regularly with MCPS and offered staffing and technical help for the review of CPS records.

MCPS staff reported the scale of the rescreening: 14,003 employees were identified as requiring rescreening (some needing fingerprint checks, some CPS checks, some both). A school‑by‑school, cluster approach began in September; presenters said 32 of 211 schools had been completed at the time of the briefing and school‑based staff rescreening is targeted for completion by the December 2025 break, with central office staff to follow in the spring.

MCPS projected the one‑time expense tied to the rescreening initiative at about $1,900,000, most of it for contracted fingerprinting equipment and personnel to support the surge work; other implementation work is being done by existing staff across offices. Presenters said the district has moved from a paper CPS process to the state online portal, which reduced CPS clearance times from roughly 4–6 weeks to a reported 1–2 business days in many cases.

On procedures, MCPS staff explained the tiered approach for volunteers: brief, supervised activities (classroom reads, concessions) require school coordination and do not require fingerprints; recurring but supervised roles require completion of child‑abuse‑and‑neglect training; unsupervised access (overnight trips, volunteer coaches, certain virtual volunteers) requires both the training and fingerprint/CPS checks. MCPS has created a central volunteer hub and trained volunteer liaisons at schools to manage compliance.

The board and staff also discussed legal and operational details. Presenters noted Rap Back (the FBI federal continuous‑monitoring service) became available to MCPS in 2019; employees hired before then must be re‑fingerprinted to be enrolled. For newly discovered CPS findings, DHHS staff said locating older archived records can take weeks; when CPS identifies a disqualifying finding, that information is transmitted to MCPS, which refers current‑employee cases to the Department of Compliance and Investigations (DCI) for review. The district said it is formalizing suitability‑review criteria so decisions are consistent and legally sound.

Board members pressed for clarity on timelines and costs and asked that the district remove financial barriers for parent volunteers who need fingerprints for unsupervised roles. MCPS said it is exploring ways to waive or offset volunteer fingerprint fees and will return with follow‑up detail. Several board members also thanked DHHS for the interagency cooperation.

Superintendent Taylor said the board will receive regular, written updates on rescreening progress and noted the district intends to codify the revised practices in policy and regulation. The board's policy management committee also will develop a standing background‑screening policy during the school year.

Why it matters: background screening and continuous monitoring are a central safeguard for student safety. The district described a concrete schedule and budget for closing known screening gaps and emphasized the interagency nature of CPS checks, continuous criminal‑history monitoring, and the need to codify practices to prevent future backlogs.