North Clay Elementary and Junior High School in Louisville, Illinois is taking another approach to gaining the involvement of its parents. More fathers and grandfathers are taking part in the school and their children’s lives. They’re part of the school’s new WatchDOGS program, an initiative by the National Center for Fathering to get men involved in their children’s schools. North Clay’s entry into the program makes it one of more than 1,650 participating schools nationwide, but only the seventh in Illinois.
The program has quickly become a hit with students and volunteers alike, Top Dog and first-grade teacher Curtis Thompson said recently. Just a month ago, as school was kicking off, the program had only eight men in its ranks. By the end of September, that number had grown to 31. Local businesses also have thrown their support behind the program, donating just over $1,600 to the WatchDOGS.
But the fast growth of a new and unfamiliar program made at least one area resident uncomfortable enough to bring her concerns before the district’s school board, making for a rocky start for the month-old program as board members took up discussions on the district’s background check policy for volunteers.
According to its website, the WatchDOGS program was started by a concerned father in the wake of the 1998 Jonesboro, Ark., middle school shooting, in which two boys, aged 11 and 13, shot and killed four students and one teacher. That said, student safety is the program’s main emphasis, Thompson said. “We’re doing everything we can to help keep the kids safe,” he said. “It’s our No. 1 priority.”
But the program recently came under fire over safety when a local child care provider approached the district’s school board with concerns about how background checks were being conducted on the men involved in WatchDOGS.
Currently, the school district does not perform official background checks on WatchDOGS — or any other volunteers. Instead, the district cross-references names against public listings of sex offenders and consults with the Clay County Sheriff’s Office and may make contact with volunteers’ employers, if further investigation is deemed necessary by the unit office, Superintendent Monty Aldrich said.
Child care provider Shelly Allen told administrators and board members at the Sept. 23 meeting she was afraid that process might allow the wrong people to slip through the cracks without a comprehensive criminal background check. Allen was the only school district resident who showed up at the meeting to make her point, but she said she is not the only parent concerned. “Yes, I’m the only person here, but there’s a bunch of other people out there who are worried,” Allen said. “I am not against the program whatsoever. I am just against the way the backgrounds are conducted.”
State law only requires schools to do criminal background checks on employees, leaving districts open to determine their own policy for checking volunteers. That leeway has created discrepancies from district to district across the state. For example, Effingham Unit 40, as Allen pointed out to North Clay board members, requires background checks for participants in its popular mentoring program.
But WatchDOGS proponents say the two programs are too different to be compared. Unlike the Unit 40 program, the WatchDOGS are not assigned to a specific student but rather hop between classrooms to cover as many students as possible, so there is not the same one-on-one component that there is to the mentoring program. Moreover, Thompson told board members, WatchDOGS’ contact with students is always supervised by teachers.
And in a time of financial instability brought on by the state’s budget crisis, perhaps the district’s biggest argument against the formal background checks is the cost that comes with them. Background checks currently run the school $49 a piece, Aldrich said, a cost that, when multiplied by the number of men involved in the program, could become prohibitive. “If we pay $49 per person, we’ll have our answers, but we might not have a program,” he told the board.
In the end, board members told Allen they would take her concerns “under advisement,” but took no formal action on the issue. The week following the school board meeting saw no changes to the WatchDOGS’ operations, with eight volunteers showing up on campus to read and play with the preschool through fifth-grade students. Another nine were slated to come last week. Elementary and Junior High Principal Julie Healy said recently the program has created “a positive situation all the way around.”
