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New background-check requirement for high school referees
In the coming months, nearly 8,000 high school referees will undergo criminal background checks to comply with a new statewide policy.
And that fact sits well with Taunton parents, coaches and school officials.
“It’s a most excellent idea, and I’m appalled that it took this long,” said Kyle Coe, whose 15-year-old daughter is a Taunton High School freshman.
Coe, 24, said she hasn’t yet played on a school team but is considering trying out for the soccer team next year.
Beginning in the 2015 fall sports season, passing a background check will be a requirement for anyone who officiates school sporting events in the commonwealth. Massachusetts joins 27 other states by adopting the policy.
Under the policy, referees may be prohibited from working games for offenses involving violence, drugs, sexual assault and crimes against children. Suspended referees would be able to appeal to a review board.
“It is pretty widespread, and it’s increasing,” said Richard Pearson, executive director of the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, the governing body for school sports in the state. “More states each year are signing on to background check policies and developing them for their schools.”
There was no specific incident or allegation against a referee that sparked the policy switch, according to Pearson and other people involved in crafting the policy. The issue was first raised in 2013 by some school officials in the South Shore League.
Recently retired Bristol-Plymouth Regional Technical School teacher David Lewry says he’s been coaching Taunton High girls’ varsity softball teams since 1994.
“I never thought about it, but it sounds like something that makes sense,” he said.
Lewry estimates that between 20 and 25 referees, mostly men but also women, work games at the high school during any given year. He said he and other school coaches are subject to a Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) background check.
Superintendent of Schools Julie Hackett said running criminal background checks for referees makes sense: “It sounds like a sensible idea,” she said.
“All of our staff and volunteers, chaperones, workers coming into the building — anyone with the potential to be unsupervised at any point around children — has to be background-checked,” Cohasset High School athletic director Ron Ford said.
“Officials have access to our facilities. They use the locker rooms and restrooms at times. It just made sense. It didn’t make sense to have a group of people in our schools who didn’t go through the same process as everyone else.”
In addition to protecting students and schools, the policy will also protect referees, Ford said. Beginning in the fall, there won’t be any doubts about a referee’s background, he explained.
After discussing background checks at a meeting of South Shore League officials, Ford and Michael Schultz, the athletic director at Carver Middle High School, brought the idea to the MIAA.
“We went to the MIAA assembly, and it wasn’t voted on at that time,” Schultz recalled. “The recommendation from the board was to put together a subcommittee to explore the concept and possibly look at some other states that are doing it.”
Modeling a policy after Connecticut’s, the subcommittee presented the new proposal to the MIAA board earlier this spring.
The MIAA adopted the policy and is working to finalize several final details.
Referees will be responsible for paying a fee of approximately $40 to cover the background checks, Pearson said. The MIAA will contract with an outside agency to perform the reviews.
“Although it took two years to get to the final product, I’m very comfortable with the policy we put place,” Schultz said. “I think it will put a lot of parents and school administrators at ease.”
Taunton School Committee member Carol Doherty was receptive to the news: “Our priority has to be the safety and security of our kids,” she said.
But Doherty also said she wants to read over the new policy more carefully in order to examine any “nuances.”
She said running background checks on referees is consistent with a law requiring public, private and parochial school personnel — hired before former Gov. Deval Patrick approved a law in 2012 requiring adherence to a national criminal database — to submit fingerprints before the start of the 2016-17 academic year.
The School Committee discussed that topic during a January meeting.
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