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Stronger Background Checks, Fingerprinting and Badging Underway

Posted On September 11, 2025
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The safety of our students and staff always comes first. The recent report from the Montgomery County Office of the Inspector General made clear that background check procedures had not been as strong or consistent as they needed to be. We agree with those findings, and we are acting quickly to correct these issues and catch up. This work has begun across the district. Here’s what we’re doing:

  • Re-Fingerprinting Staff Hired Before 2019: All will be enrolled in RapBack, the FBI’s continuous background monitoring system, ensuring ongoing safety checks, not just one-time clearances.
  • Clearing CPS Checks: With support from MCPS and the Department of Health and Human Services, dedicated teams are processing any yet-to-be done Child Protective Services clearances quickly through a new electronic system.
  • Re-Badging Staff: Updated badges are being issued through multiple mobile badging teams and printers. Security Certified.png

Every employee, contractor and volunteer will receive a new badge displaying the “Security Certified” image. This visible marker will confirm that the individual has successfully completed the updated clearance process.

This work began Sept. 8 in the Paint Branch cluster, following the completion of all Special Needs schools last week. With 211 schools across MCPS, resources have been surged, including multiple fingerprinting stations and additional staff support, to complete this process by mid-December.

For the future, improvements in our processes will allow MCPS to keep pace with new hires, new volunteers and contractors so that everyone working with our students, and alongside each other, is “MCPS Security Certified.”

It’s important to know that every staff member, contractor and volunteer currently working with students has already passed a criminal background check. No one has unsupervised access to students without clearance.

MCPS will report progress on this work to the Board of Education at its business meeting in September, and again before the Montgomery County Council’s Audit Committee on Sept. 26.