The name of every public school athletic coach in the state will be run through the Department of Education's centralized background checking system to ensure all coaches have clean records. This comes in the wake of a state audit of Kailua High School that showed a failure to appropriately clear a number of coaches who had criminal records.

While background checks for athletic coaches are initiated by schools and conducted by DOE district offices, personnel specialist J.R. Kashiwamura said his central office is "taking necessary steps" to make sure there weren't any additional lapses involving other schools. Kashiwamura heads the Employee Background Check Unit in the DOE's Office of Human Resources. The DOE has seven district offices.

Generally, the central office handles background clearance checks just for teachers, student teachers and department civil service employees.

Kashiwamura said his central office had planned to run the names of all coaches as well as casual hires through state and federal databases, but the Kailua audit released Friday has given the project new urgency.

"I'm not saying I don't trust the schools," he said. "We just want to make sure everyone has gone through our background check process. We have to be perfect 100 percent of the time because all it takes is one."

According to the audit — the first done on a public high school — the school had failed to complete background checks on a number of coaches during the past three years.

Said the audit: "As a result of the athletic director's hiring practices, several individuals with criminal backgrounds coached student-athletes at Kailua High School."

Two were subsequently fired after one was discovered to be a convicted murderer and the other to have been convicted of assault and domestic abuse.

Three others who had been convicted of drunken driving and other crimes of lesser severity were judged to be "of reputable and responsible character" and allowed to remain in coaching positions. The employees' names have not been released.

Kashiwamura has asked for a complete list of the hundreds of school coaches throughout the state. Their names will be fed into the computerized Hawai'i Criminal Justice Data Center, which gives an immediate response regarding criminal background.

In addition, all coaches will be fingerprinted for clearance through the FBI's national database, which takes approximately 48 hours for results to come back.

"This is just Kailua High School (that has been audited), but we need to look at this statewide and make a determination of where the gaps are," Kashiwamura said. "I'm pretty sure if there are any, I'll find it out through running those reports."

CHECKING COACHES

Kashiwamura said he does not know exactly how many coaches are working in the state's schools, but according to the audit, high schools are allocated a fixed number of coaching positions based on the sports offered, not on student-athlete participation. Football, for example, rates 13 coaching positions.

"What I'm going to do is get the list and see who completed our process," he said.

He could not say whether any of the information he finds will be made public. He said that decision would be up to his supervisor, acting assistant superintendent Faye Ikei, who heads human resources.

At the same time Kashiwamura plans to meet with all of the state public school athletic directors this month to review the department's protocols that demand background checks before coaches are hired.

"They do need to be aware of the requirements and the importance of it," said DOE spokesman Greg Knudsen. "It will be brought up in context and mention the Kailua case of what can happen if (protocols) are not followed."

The meeting is held annually, Knudsen said, but this particular one will focus on some of the findings of the Kailua audit, which also raised issues with the way financial issues and booster club fundraising were handled at the school.

THE HONOR SYSTEM

Knudsen said employees have a responsibility in filling out an application form to honestly disclose their backgrounds. "So, if they don't disclose, that in itself is subject to dismissal," he said.

But under standard procedures, the department also expects schools to do background checks to ensure honesty, Knudsen said.

In the official response to the audit, superintendent Pat Hamamoto said no coach will be allowed to start work until clearance is received by the school on their background check.

State auditor Marion Higa, whose audit covered the past three school years, said parents have a right to expect that schools have taken proper precautions.

"There's a purpose for doing background checks," Higa said. "And, if one were a parent, one would want assurances that anyone coming in contact with my child had been cleared by the department. The expectation is that they've been cleared."

Knudsen said that in general, a person's criminal background is not allowed to be a condition affecting employment. However, he said the DOE is allowed to consider it in its hiring policies.