Montgomery County Public Schools has completed a systemwide security rescreening of school-based and transportation staff, wrapping up a months-long effort prompted by findings from the Montgomery County Office of the Inspector General.
According to MCPS, the district has now finished background checks, fingerprinting, and badging for all affected employees after nearly four months of work. The rescreening effort began in September following an Inspector General report that found background check procedures were not as strong or consistent as they needed to be.
MCPS started the process on Sept. 8 in the Paint Branch cluster and completed the final round last week in the Springbrook and Damascus clusters. In total, 8,012 school-based staff members and 1,101 non-school-based staff members were rescreened as part of the initiative.
When the process was announced in September, MCPS acknowledged the shortcomings identified in the Inspector General’s report and outlined several corrective steps. Those included re-fingerprinting staff hired before 2019 and enrolling them in the FBI’s RapBack system, which provides continuous background monitoring rather than a one-time clearance. The district also worked with the Department of Health and Human Services to clear outstanding Child Protective Services checks using a new electronic system, while deploying multiple mobile badging teams to reissue employee identification badges.
As part of the overhaul, every employee, contractor, and volunteer will receive a new badge displaying an “MCPS Security Certified” image, signaling that the individual successfully completed the updated clearance process. MCPS emphasized that the badge system provides a visible and immediate way to confirm that someone working in a school has met current security requirements.
MCPS also reiterated that all staff, contractors, and volunteers who were working with students during the rescreening period had already passed a criminal background check, and that no one has unsupervised access to students without clearance.
Looking ahead, MCPS says the changes put in place during this effort will allow the district to keep pace with new hires, volunteers, and contractors going forward, ensuring that everyone working with students remains “MCPS Security Certified.”
