Questions Raised About Schools' Hiring Procedures

School Committee Chairman Suzy Littlefield said she’s asking for a full review of the way criminal record checks are done on job applicants in the wake of information that the custodian charged with stealing computers and jewelry from the the middle school had a court record when hired.

“I want to know the policy of other towns, of private schools in our area and exactly what  is done here,” Littlefield said.

“I want to focus a little light on this,” she said.

Littlefield’s comments came after Tuesday night’s School Committee meeting when Superintendent Bella T. Wong outlined the school’s policy on checking applicants’ Criminal Offender Record Information or CORI.

Wong said the department’s policy is that a CORI check is done on anyone who may have unsupervised access to students, including not only job applicants but parents wishing to volunteer in classrooms.

Wong said she, Assistant Superintendent Sal Petralia and school Business Manager Ruth Quinn Berdell are the only three in the department authorized to check CORI backgrounds.

She said a criminal record does not necessarily prevent an applicant from being hired, but that the relevance and nature of the charges, time since conviction and specific circumstances of the incidents are also taken into consideration.

Wong refused to comment specifically about the hiring of night custodian Gino Lister who began working at the middle school last spring and was charged two weeks ago with larceny over $250 and receiving stolen property after an investigation that traced computers stolen from the school back to him, according to court records.

Documents in Framingham District Court also show Lister had been before a judge at least twice over the past 12 years when he pleaded guilty to assault and battery and later to breaking and entering in a case that was continued for a year without a finding.

Lister’s wife also told police he was in an outpatient drug treatment program for an addiction to opiates at the time of his arrest by Wellesley Police, according to arrest records filed in Dedham District Court.

Wong said at Tuesday night’s School Committee meeting that the department’s CORI check of Lister showed no convictions.

That admission came in response to comments by Town Meeting member David Himmelberger, a father of two middle school girls and former member of the Board of Selectmen.

“How can the hiring of this custodian ever have occurred?” he asked the School Committee.

“Either we have inadequate protocols in place or the existing protocols were ignored,” Himmelberger said.

He also asked the committee to provide a full accounting of exactly what equipment and other property was stolen from the middle school.

Initial reports were that 14 MacBooks and 14 iPads along with other technology equipment such as flip video cameras and iPad docking stations were stolen. Wong has since said that report was “conservative,” and Himmelberger questioned whether the total number of missing computers may be as high as 60 or 80.