By Linda Taaffe

There were no warning bells, red flags or known reasons for anyone to be concerned when the three local educators in court on unrelated sexual abuse cases were hired. All had positive references, and allegedly no criminal records.

David Joseph Welsh, 57, was a recent hire at North Star Academy in Redwood City when Los Altos police discovered child pornography on his home computer during an undercover investigation. The husband and father had been teaching in the area for a decade.

The late Rev. Joseph Pritchard came to St. Nicholas Catholic Church in 1979 after serving at St. Martin of Tours in San Jose. By most accounts, Pritchard was a well-liked pastor with a good sense of humor. The son of a former Santa Clara mayor, Pritchard had spent most of his life in the Bay Area. Sexual-abuse charges brought by a former student from St. Martin’s are being tried in San Francisco this week.

Choir teacher Brett Michael Bartlett, 25, pleaded guilty last week to having sexual intercourse with three teen students. He taught at Homestead High School in Cupertino, which serves students in south Los Altos, for three years.

Since the charges, others have stepped forward to give less-than-stellar accounts of these men. A parent at a San Jose school told local media that her daughter had told school administrators that Welsh allegedly had acted inappropriately. He left the school shortly after. A Bartlett family member publicly announced that Bartlett allegedly had raped her when they were children. Yet, they passed school district checks.

These cases have raised questions about how effective California’s required teacher background checks are.

California State Education code

California State Education codes require public schools to hire credentialed teachers who must undergo background checks as part of the credentialing process. All other employees, at both private and public schools, must send their fingerprints to the Department of Justice for criminal background check.

A person’s criminal record, including everything from murder charges to trespassing violations, is made available. Those who have been convicted of a serious or violent felony are prohibited from working at the school.

That doesn’t mean a person convicted of a felony won’t be hired. Often, it’s up to the discretion of the district.

It depends on the crime, said Marge Gratiot, superintendent of the Los Altos School District. Not many applicants come back with felony charges in their background, she said. The district has hired an employee with a known felony charge. The case involved a drunk and disorderly arrest from college, she said.

Prior to 1997, school employees could began working with children while the results of the background check were being processed - something that typically took four to six weeks.

Former Assemblyman Ted Lempert, who represented District 21 that includes Los Altos, co-authored a bill, prohibiting anyone from coming into contact with children until after the results of the background check were released.

Technology has shortened the process to about 72 hours. In Santa Clara County, LiveScan electronically processes fingerprints and automatically updates schools about their employees’ arrest records through a computer database. Each school has an assigned code to view its employees records.

Los Altos Police Sgt. John Hughmanick said schools are required to conduct what he considers the minimum background check when contrasted with police hiring checks, that require polygraphs and psychological tests.

“We look at every dimension of a person’s life,” Hughmanick said. “There’s not a whole lot we don’t know about a person.”

Fingerprint checks won’t reveal problems with former employers, he said. Previous employers can’t release certain information about employees unless that person gives them written permission to do so.

In addition, only a person’s arrest history is available on the fingerprint check. That means if there wasn’t enough evidence to charge someone with a crime, there won’t necessarily be a record that any complaints were ever filed.

A 2003 study of sexual harassment in schools found that 38.7 percent of teachers accused of misconduct, resigned, left their district or retired. Of that number, 16 percent went to other schools. A study conducted by the Los Altos-based David and Lucile Packard Foundation found that only 42 percent of reported cases make it to court. Most of those are settled by plea bargains.

Los Altos police are working with schools to bring an awareness program to every campus, said officer Susan Anderson who heads the city’s Internet Predator Program.