LM April 2024

Message From the Executive Director Coming Soon: IASA Sponsored Program to Help Schools Vet and Manage Vendors

Dr. Brent Clark

Last November, the Boston office of the FBI issued a warning after multiple reports of suspicious men trying to gain access to a Massachusetts school without authorization.The alarming events

both the district and the vendor for each employee that is background verified and is in service to the district. Verified employees will receive a hard copy and digital verification SSID badge if approved through the SSID portal.

stirred up fears among parents that children were not safe at school, forcing superintendents to respond to families and review protocols and procedures, again. We all know that a superintendent’s number one responsibility is to provide students with a safe environment, and we are held accountable when crisis situations are handled poorly. Ensuring student safety is multi-faceted, but one way to provide another layer of security, and manage risk, is to vet more of the people that enter school buildings and campuses. In Illinois, thousands of vendor employees enter schools annually. While there are background check systems in place for school parents, guests and district employees, there is no comprehensive system available to school districts to vet and manage their school vendor employees. That’s why IASA is excited to introduce Safe School ID Check (SSID), a new IASA Sponsored Program that gives schools the tools and the power to fully vet and manage every vendor employee who enters their schools—at no additional cost to the district (see below). Within the next week, IASA will officially launch the new program. The announcement will include links to three upcoming Zoom sessions in May that will be led by our safety partner in this venture. The virtual meetings are your best opportunity to learn about SSID and ask questions, so I encourage you to register. If a school district opts into SSID, then a Board resolution and a notice to all vendors serving the district would be the initial steps, and we will have samples of both. Once notified, the vendor would then access the SSID portal to register and upload employee documents for background verification. The results of the verification process would be available to

Registration in advance of being on school district premises is advised to give the system time to properly perform the verification process through the local, state and federal databases before providing an SSID access badge. SSID performs extensive background checks on each employee registered. There will be quarterly, automated re-verification for frequent vendor employees and annual automated re-verifications for infrequent vendor employees. Districts will retain final control of who they allow on school premises. Once a vendor employee receives an SSID badge it would be usable at other participating districts, and the subsequent employee would not have to be re-verified for each district within the given timeframe. There is a fee for this service and the vendor would be responsible for the fee. An early adopter period will run from June 1 through September 30 for vendors to process their employees at $99/badge, beginning in October the regular price of $129/badge would be in place. SSID badges are individually issued and cannot be shared amongst vendor employees. More detailed information about this IASA Sponsored program is forthcoming in the upcoming webinars and informational materials. I hope this column puts SSID on your radar and becomes another useful tool for your district as we all work together to make our schools a safer place for all.

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LM April 2024