Some teachers and other school employees with criminal pasts are in a battle to preserve their jobs as a result of a recently revised state law aimed at enhancing the safety of schoolchildren.

Four lawsuits have been filed around the state so far this month — including one by a Harrisburg School District teacher — challenging the state Department of Education's application of new rules about criminal histories to current school employees.

The Pennsylvania State Education Association is footing the legal bills for the teachers who are challenging the department's stance — causing one lawmaker to accuse the teachers union of putting its interests ahead of kids and their parents.

Known as Act 24 and enacted last year, the law requires school employees to disclose any prior arrest or convictions for serious offenses, including homicide, kidnapping, sexual assault or aggravated assault. The law also covers those hired before a 1986 law that mandated criminal background checks for new employees took effect.

Directed to fire teachers

The department’s interpretation of the law directs administrators to fire anyone coming in contact with schoolchildren who had been convicted of one of the 28 listed offenses in the past. It says those people should be barred for life from working in schools.

Harrisburg schools have a “multiple number” of employees with past convictions for serious offenses, according to information it shared with the department. Chief counsel Joseph Miller said some are teachers and some hold nonteaching positions.

He declined to disclose the number or names of those employees or details about the types of convictions on their records, citing confidentiality rules of the educator discipline process.

But in a lawsuit filed in Dauphin County Court, high school math department head Eric Croll spoke of his run-in with the law 19 years ago that resulted in a corruption-of-minor conviction.

Though the charge stemmed from the then-20-year-old taking along an underage friend when he broke into an unoccupied barn, corruption of minors is on the list of serious crimes the department says are firing offenses.

Croll filed the lawsuit to challenge that interpretation. The Harrisburg School District has joined him in asking the court to allow him to remain employed until his lawsuit is resolved.

In the meantime, he remains in the classroom.

Department officials said at least 14 public or private schools or school districts have reported having one or more employees with arrests or convictions in their background for one of the offenses listed. The department staff is still reviewing those reports submitted last month, and that number could rise, department spokesman Tim Eller said.

Interpretation dispute

At the heart of Croll’s lawsuit, as well as the other cases filed in York, Delaware and Allegheny County courts, is how the department defined the following section: “No person subject to this act shall be employed in a public or private school ... where the report of criminal history record information indicates the applicant has been convicted” of any of the 28 listed offenses.

The department is interpreting the section to cover any prospective or current employee or contractor who comes in contact with children.

In their suits, the school employees argue that the statute’s wording suggests it applies only to future employees.

“It even uses the word ‘applicant’ in the very section the department of education is relying upon. Mr. Croll was an applicant six years ago. He’s not an applicant now and should not be subject to being terminated now,” said Harrisburg attorney Thomas Scott, the PSEA-retained attorney representing Croll.

The school employees argue that even if the law is determined to apply to current employees, it is unconstitutional. It violates employees’ due process rights through its retroactive application. And it penalizes them again for crimes they were already punished for.

They also argue that the education secretary is not empowered to direct a school to fire an employee.

Miller said the employees’ arguments don’t protect children from people convicted of serious offenses, which was lawmakers’ intent for passing the law.

Furthermore, he said the employees’ argument violates a prior state Supreme Court ruling that holds when it comes to other people’s safety and protection, the same employment rules apply to prospective and current employees.

Sen. Jeffrey Piccola, R-Dauphin County, who spearheaded the effort to get this law enacted in response to a Dauphin County grand jury recommendation, said the department’s interpretation is exactly what the Legislature intended.

“People who commit these offenses ... should not be hired to work around children, period,” he said.

Education Secretary Ronald Tomalis said he has received no pushback from any legislator about the department’s interpretation. Moreover, when it comes to the special nature of the teacher-child relationship, he said you have to look beyond just meeting the letter of the law.

Tomalis said, “There’s always a balance in these situations, yet it is important that we remember that we’re talking about a special profession that takes in its care children that parents entrust to us. If this is not the profession where we should be more sensitive, then I don’t know what is.”

Clean record since 1992

Croll was 20 in 1992 when he, along with a 17-year-old friend, broke into an unoccupied barn in Schuylkill County and stole items. His conviction led to a sentence of an overnight stay in jail, plus a fine.

He then went on to pursue his college degree and teaching certification.

“OK. That was bad,” his attorney acknowledges, but Scott adds a caveat. “Whether it was corruption of minors or not, I mean he pled to it, but I don’t think that’s the kind of thing people have in mind when they look at that statute.”

Scott said the department was aware of Croll’s conviction and vetted it before issuing him his teacher’s certification. The district was aware of his criminal history when it hired him in 2005. At that time, the state’s background check law barred only those convicted within the last five years from school employment.

Croll has had a clean record since the 1992 case.

But based on the department’s interpretation, none of that matters.

The Education Department argues the law requires Harrisburg Superintendent Sybil Knight-Burney to begin the termination procedure for Croll. Failure to do so would place her under threat of a civil penalty of up to $2,500 and could put her educational credentials in jeopardy.

District officials asked the court to let Croll to stay in the classroom until the case is resolved.

“The public interest is not served by removing a quality teacher from his classroom based solely upon a criminal conviction that is two decades old and that has no bearing now or in the future on [Croll’s] ability to deliver the curriculum of the school district to his students in a positive and effective way,” the district’s motion states.

Efforts to contact Knight-Burney and district solicitor Marc Tarlow on Thursday and Friday were unsuccessful.

The other lawsuits that have been filed in counties around the state involve York City School District custodian Marvin Rowe and cafeteria aide Cheryllynn Riddley; an intermediate unit employee in Allegheny County; and a bus driver and a part-time custodian in the Penn-Delco School District in Delaware County.

The state is asking the county courts to transfer the cases to the Commonwealth Court, where they can be consolidated.

The safety of kids

Piccola said the Pennsylvania State Education Association’s stance in this legal fight puts union interests ahead of kids and their parents.

“They are more interested in the employment of adults than they are the education of kids, and in this case, the potential safety of kids,” he said.

PSEA spokesman David Broderic took exception to that.

“The education and safety of children in public schools is of paramount importance to PSEA. ... The fact that PSEA provides legal representation to members who have legitimate legal issues connected with their employment is something our members expect PSEA to provide,” he said.

Piccola said he is particularly disturbed at Harrisburg School District’s balking at firing an employee with a corruption of minors conviction. He said that sends a bad message to children.

“We’re not saying [Croll] can’t work. That he has to go on welfare. We’re not suggesting he can’t get a job at Weis or Giant or even as an executive in some corporation. But we are suggesting because of his record, he should not be around kids,” Piccola said.

But Croll’s attorney said it makes no sense to fire him.

“In Eric’s case, I think there are very few fair-minded people who would say [someone] who has been satisfactorily performing a job for six years should be thrown out of the job because of something that happened when he was 20,” Scott said. “Something that’s been known, something he spent overnight in jail for. That was a big crime that costs a man his career? Baloney.”

Act 24

The new law governing teacher background check mandates:

— Anyone convicted of any of 28 specific offenses are barred for life from working in schools. Previous state law only prevented someone from getting a school job within five years of their conviction.

— Teachers or others who come in contact with school children are required to report any new arrest on one of 28 specified charges to their school district within 72 hours.

— The state Department of Education says the lifetime disqualification applies to current and future employees, an interpretation that is now at the center of a legal challenge.

— The 28 offenses are: homicide; aggravated assault; stalking; kidnapping; unlawful restraint; luring a child into a motor vehicle or structure; rape; sexual assault; involuntary deviate sexual intercourse; institutional sexual assault; sexual assault involving a minor; aggravated indecent assault; indecent assault; indecent exposure; sexual intercourse with an animal; incest; concealing the death of a child; endangering the welfare of children; endangering the welfare of an infant; prostitution; providing pornography to a minor; corruption of minors; sexual abuse of children; unlawful contact with a minor; solicitation of minors to traffic drugs; sexual exploitation of children; drug felonies; and any similar offenses that occur outside of Pennsylvania.