WINSTON-SALEM, N.C.—
Employees of Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools will be subject to random background checks after officials discovered a middle school drama teacher with a criminal past had slipped through the cracks.Ralph Surridge, a drama teacher at Mineral Springs Middle School, was arrested Saturday on charges of sexual misconduct with a student. Investigators later learned Surridge had served jail time for felony embezzlement charges in 1985, something school officials said they were unaware of when they hired Surridge in 2003.
Currently, background checks are only performed when employees are hired by the school system, but employees hired decades ago were not subject to the thoroughness of modern background checks.
According to Theo Helm, a spokesman for the school system, the discrepancy between Surridge's past and what his background check turned up bothers the school system and parents.
"We believe that it is an anomaly, but we owe it to ourselves and to parents to find out if that is true or not," he said.
With more than 8,000 employees who come in contact with students, school officials will first check between 100 and 150 employees from all sectors of the system. If discrepancies are found, the random sampling could be expanded.
"If we can do anything to keep our students safe, it's worth every penny," said Dossie Poteat, the principal at East Forsyth Middle School.
"If you don't have anything to hide, you don't care if they look. To me, I don't feel it's a violation of my rights for them to go back and check it," he said.
A few year's ago, the school system's pre-hire background checks were done in-house using information made available from the state. But currently, the system spends $100,000 a year to have a private company complete the checks.
That same company will perform the random checks, which are expected to be completed in time to present findings to the school board by November.
