Some 350 school board members across New Jersey must resign their positions immediately after failing to complete a criminal background check now mandated by state law, a Department of Education official said.

The requirement, imposed through legislation enacted last year, is the only one of its kind in the country. It is designed to hold school board members to the same standards that prevent criminals from becoming public school teachers, including drug possession or criminal mischief offenses.

Failure to have completed the background check by Dec. 31 is also an offense and officials who refuse to step down could be charged with a fourth-degree crime under the new law.

"If you don’t complete the background check, and you try to stick around, you risk going to jail. It’s as simple as that," said Assemblyman Jerry Green (D-Union), the legislation’s sponsor.

Board members in good standing are expected to police their colleagues, said Department of Education spokesman Richard Vespucci, though it’s unclear how they or the state will handle disgruntled, ineligible officials who refuse to walk away or how the process will play out.

"You can’t sit on your school board if you didn’t submit the background check," Vespucci said. "It’s the local board members’ responsibility to ensure that doesn’t happen."

Ineligible officials who appear at school board meetings and attempt to vote could be arrested, Green said. There is no process to appeal ineligibility or disqualification under the law, which earned unanimous support from the state Legislature before Gov. Chris Christie signed it in May.

Green sponsored the law (A444) to prevent any elected officials with criminal pasts from "falling through the cracks" after he learned of a Plainfield school board member with a history of drug convictions.

Rasheed Abdul-Haqq, who is fighting his disqualification in court at taxpayer expense, has said the law is overly punitive, noting that his crime, heroin possession, took place more than 40 years ago.

The state expects to notify all ineligible board members of their status in writing by week’s end and will release the names of those individuals and the districts they serve at that time, Vespucci said. The state sent letters to board members over the summer and again in early December notifying them of the requirement.

The board secretary in the South Orange-Maplewood School District reminded members to complete the background check, board president Beth Daugherty said. She conceded, however, it could be easy to forget about the requirement amid the chaos of other responsibilities.

"This is a good idea. We are public officials handling public money there to serve the public," Daugherty said. "To make sure that there’s nothing hidden in anyone’s past makes sense to me."

Of the state’s 4,702 non-charter school board members, 189 failed to submit their background checks by the end-of-year deadline. In addition, nine members from districts including Plainfield and Long Hill who did submit the check have been disqualified for past crimes.

Noncompliance among board of trustee members at charter schools is much higher.

One quarter of all charter school board officials, or 165 of 597 trustees, did not submit their criminal history reviews and are ineligible to continue serving their school communities. In addition, three trustees have been disqualified for past crimes.

Confusion among school officials about when to submit the criminal history review may have lowered the rate of compliance, said Frank Belluscio, spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association.

Immediately after the law was signed last spring, the Department of Education did not have access to the FBI’s criminal history database, which is needed to complete the review. The state began processing the background checks midway through the summer.

"There was a serious communications gap earlier this year," Belluscio said. "Along the way, the urgency of the matter was lost."

Kathy Christie, vice president of the nonprofit Education Commission of the States, said it is fairly common for states to have ethics and nepotism provisions, but "background checks appear to be rare." The commission analyses similarities among state education laws and policies.

Elsewhere in the nation, an Illinois law requires employees of Chicago’s school board to submit a criminal background check. A Minnesota law prevents sex offenders from being school board candidates. And a Georgia law bars school board members from working in the bail bond business.

Related coverage:

• Recent N.J. law bans those convicted of certain crimes from serving on school boards

• Many N.J. school board members have not complied with law requiring background checks

• Plainfield school board member with criminal past challenges new law expected to remove him from office