The Fannin County Board of Education announced changes to its hiring policy at its November 10th meeting. The move is an effort to comply with recent changes by the Professional Standards Commission (PSC), the state agency responsible for the maintenance and issuance of Georgia Teaching Certificates. The change in the policy, called GAK (1), regards background checks for new hires.

According to Superintendent Mark Henson, Fannin County has typically issued temporary teaching contracts for new hires until their criminal background check was complete, at which time a new contract was issued. This allowed new teachers to work in the interim. The new policy, however, omits the issuance of the temporary contracts for new hires. Rather, when a new teacher or certified employee is hired and after he or she has been fingerprinted and has provided a consent form for a criminal background check, the teacher receives a clearance certificate if the background check comes back clear. The certificate verifies a satisfactory criminal background check. As such, the school district will issue a full contract for the year.

The board approved the change, with little discussion. But, Henson commented that this was a better way of going about the process, and perhaps one that saves the county time and money, streamlining the process. The board accepted four resignation, four recommendations for substitute custodians, and four recommendations for substitute teachers. No new teachers were recommended in personnel.