National Defense Authorization Bill
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I thank the Chairman of the HELP Committee, Senator Alexander, for his comments.
I share his concerns that section 578 of the National Defense Authorization Act bill is not the right way to ensure students can learn in safe and secure school environments, and will impose unfair and unreasonable requirements on more than 1,200 schools districts across the country. Criminal background checks are a critically important means to ensure that students are safe in our schools, and that is why they are required in 46 States. But the language of section 578 will force the 1,225 school districts that receive Impact Aid funds--and which are in almost every State--to have two separate criminal background check systems for different schools and different employees within a single school district. It is costly, duplicative, poorly conceived, and should not be part of a Defense authorization bill.
In my State of Washington 628 schools, about a quarter of our public schools, receive Impact Aid funds and would be subject to a separate expensive set of background checks that differs from the background checks already conducted. In the chairman's State, 571 schools receive Impact Aid funds and would be subject to this different standard. It is fundamentally unfair and not beneficial to students to ask our schools and our school districts to assume the costs of these checks, which are similar to but not exactly the same as those already conducted in our States.
Our highest priority is making sure students in schools across the country are protected. But I agree with the chairman that section 578 of the National Defense Authorization Act, NDAA, is not the right way to help schools effectively protect their students. As the Chairman already noted, the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that occurred less than a year ago took a major step forward in protecting unsuspecting students and families from school employees suspected of abuse in previous positions. We incentivized schools and districts to report cases of suspected abuse to law enforcement and made it far more difficult for schools to quietly allow suspected abusers to seek employment in another State or school district. The amendment that provided those protections was adopted by a vote of 98-0.
While this was an important step forward, I continue to look for ways to build on it and continue our work making sure students are being protected most effectively. Unfortunately, rather than taking the important step of extending similar protections for students to schools operated by the Department of Defense, the bill instead overrides a comprehensive Department of Defense criminal background check regulation that provides strong new protections to students and is less than a year old. NDAA section 578 imposes a background check system with serious problems on DOD schools and then further extends that problematic background check system to non-Department of Defense schools all over the country.
Section 578 imposes a system of criminal background checks that prohibits people from working in any capacity in these schools if they have committed low-level offenses having nothing to do with violence or children. Unlike the laws in 29 States, as well as the new Department of Defense regulation, section 578 of the NDAA offers employees no way to demonstrate mitigating circumstances and requires that employees are terminated while appealing a finding, even though these records are often inaccurate or incomplete.
Section 578 is unnecessary, expensive, unfairly creates competing background check systems in States across the county and, most importantly, is not the right way to ensure our schools are safe. This provision is not within the jurisdiction of the Armed Services Committee, and I join the chairman in his position that it should not be included in the final bill.
Mr. President, I thank the Senator for engaging in the colloquy.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source