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Re: Volunteer Screening?
(warning, this is a long post... bail out now if you don't want to wade through it)
This policy has some very bad things about it and a few good things.
Here are the good:
1. This is a general effort for teams to officially attempt to protect children from people who should not be mentors. If the result of this program protects one child from a terrible act, then it has much worth, even at the inconvenience of many.
2. This program does put the responsibility on the public school systems to "police their own" volunteers (you just need to read the fine print to find it). FIRST is just wanting to see that public schools are being responsible and screening their "coaches" who are acting as mentors. If you notice, FIRST has made an exception that people who are either teachers at a public school, employed at the school, or volunteers at the school. If a school screens these people and can simply show to FIRST that they have done this, then it seems that FIRST is happy.
For instance, Kokomo High School screened me years ago through a painless process by using my name and Indiana driver's licence number. All sports team coaches go through the same thing.
Now... the negative things are big also:
1. By implementing this program, it seems to me that FIRST has now made themselves more responsible for student protection than they were without an official program. In the past, I can easily see that the responsibility is on the school... but since FIRST has started this policy, then they have to police and enforce it to make it have worth. Since it is pretty much impossible for FIRST to police and enforce this policy, then they are leaving themselves open for litigation if something bad would take place on a team which was allowed to compete but did not comply with the policy. Now, FIRST is gonna have to be the "bad guy" by punishing teams who don't adhere to the policy.
2. Teams who are not associated with public schools are going to have to do alot of work through VolunteerSelect. Team leaders are going to need to ask for references from people that might have already been on the team for many years, with is a slap in the face to these long-time FIRSTers. Most likely, these teams have already taken care of their own and done simple checks (most teams do this), but this effort will not be recognized by FIRST. This is unfortuneate.
3. FIRST is trying to do these screens with SS#'s. People have the right not to give them, and FIRST will probably not get good screening without them, so there is an endless loop of futility.
4. FIRST has no way to check to see if teams are complying. A team may only put in 1/2 of their mentor to the check (only the mentors who agree to give their SS#'s) and FIRST has no good way to know who the omitted people are.
5. Once a team leader completes the process and dutifully submits all of their teammate mentors for checks, then they will get results back. Most results will be "green", and possibly there will be a reply where a mentor is "red flagged". The team leader will not know the details of why this person is "red flagged" (DUI 10 years ago?, murder?, jay walking?, etc.). Who will know... well, FIRST will know. Do they need to know? no. Does local administration (principal, company president, etc.) or team leadership need to know? probably yes. But, from what I can gather right now, the only people who will see the detailed results are FIRST management.
All in all, I think that FIRST is going too far with requiring that all teams should do this. They should provide information and resources for teams to do it (like through VolunteerSelect), and then have teams sign off by saying that they, the teams, are responsible for screening their own mentors. Their "requirements" and mandatory screening are simply going too far.
Andy B.
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