REVISED TESTIMONY ON L.D. 653
A BILL TO REPEAL THE SCHOOL EMPLOYEE FINGERPRINTING LAW
Linda Meadows
March 26, 2003
Senator Douglas, Representative Cummings, Members of the Committee on Education and Cultural
Affairs, and guests, my name is Linda Meadows. I am the parent of five children, two still in
the public school system. I am also the survivor of childhood sexual abuse so I know the
stakes
in this issue. My children are the joy of my life and I would do anything in my power to keep
them safe. However, I have serious concerns about this fingerprinting law, and I’m not the
only
parent who does. When I first heard about this law I started talking to other parents
and
discovered that many of them agreed with me that fingerprinting teachers and other
school
employees did not seem like a good idea at all. I formed an informal group called
Parents
Against Fingerprinting and had nearly one hundred members in just a week, among my
own
acquaintances. I became sort of a spokesman for them. It is for them as well as myself
that I speak today. I have talked to many people about this subject. I did find some parents
who were happy about the law because they are so scared for their children they just want
something done, they don’t care what it is. However, most of the people I talk to are against
this law for various reasons.
Many people are worried about the erosion of our rights. About a year and a half ago two Arab
terrorists passed through our state on their way to destroy the World Trade Center. At that
time, no one, certainly not Governor King or the legislature, suggested that we require all the
members of the Arab community in our state to be fingerprinted so we could make sure that no
terrorists had infiltrated that community. No one said, “They won’t mind if they have nothing
to hide. We must protect our children at all cost.” In fact we assured our Middle Eastern
neighbors that we would not punish them just because the criminals were of similar descent. I
was proud of us at that time. We acted rightly. How can we turn to another group of people in
our community, bound together by profession, and say, “You have to come in and get fingerprinted
because we must know if your group has been infiltrated by sexual criminals. Surely you won’t
mind if you have nothing to hide. After all, we must protect our children at all cost.” It
would have been wrong to fingerprint our Arab community, and it was wrong for us to do it to
our teaching community, including the support staff. The issues are the same in each instance.
When I think of past government abuses like the debacle of Sen. Joseph McCarthy or the
strong-arm techniques of J. Edgar Hoover I have serious doubts about the wisdom of keeping a
database with the fingerprints of thousands of innocent citizens, especially educators.
Certainly you are not naïve enough to think that such abuse is not possible today, on any
level of government. Benjamin Franklin knew what he was talking about when he said that any
society that is willing to give up freedom for safety, is guaranteed neither freedom nor safety.
Another problem with the fingerprinting law is the expense. We have lost many teachers and
other
employees because they refuse to be fingerprinted. There are currently over 60 professionals
who have left teaching because of this law. There are more who retired sooner than they
had
planned, for the same reason. My son, who was in college when this law went into effect,
told
me about students who changed their majors from education because they were offended by this
law.
Teachers are not the only ones. Education support personnel from bus drivers to cafeteria
workers and substitutes also have been affected. There are no statistics on this. It is
information passed by word of mouth. Many of the people in this room know people first hand who
have quietly slipped away because they aren’t the type to rock the boat. Others have submitted
with great distress because they just couldn’t make ends meet if they left their jobs, or gave
up their retirement. The shortages among teaching staff and support personnel are well known.
Award winning teachers with master’s degrees have left this profession because they see the
flaws and the dangers in this law. That is an expense we cannot afford. Nor can we afford the
money we have wasted. We have needlessly spent millions of dollars on this law in the past
three years, and we will continue to spend more to maintain this system. I know that it may only
be a drop in the bucket compared to the whole budget, but every drop counts. Would you
sponsor a bill to set up a state supported vaccination program that promised to prevent one
child from contracting a deadly disease, while leaving many others to suffer? Perhaps you
wouldn’t mind paying $9000 to an exterminator who said he could catch one rat in your house,
but only if it was one he had caught somewhere else before. By the way, he is required by law
to set the rat free once he gets it outside your doors because no one is allowed to know about
it.
That’s right, no one is allowed to know. No one is allowed to know if this law has removed one
child predator from the school system. No one is allowed to know why any individual has been
denied a certificate, or a job. No one is even allowed to know what has appeared on his/her own
report. There is no accountability for any decision made using the information discovered by
fingerprinting.
Finally, the main reason to oppose this law is that it will not work. It cannot protect against
the child abuser who has never been convicted of a crime against children. It cannot stop
administrators from quietly passing along teachers who are suspect. It does not give children
any tools to protect themselves. Over 99% of child hood sexual abuse occurs outside a school
setting. This law doesn’t help that situation at all. It was designed for one purpose only, and
that is to catch a repeat sexual offender who tries to get a job in one of our schools. Even
then, it won’t protect anybody. Why not? - Because no one is allowed to tell. According to the
law the information obtained cannot be given to anyone. The abuser is dismissed from the school
system but is free to become a soccer coach, Girl Scout leader, or Sunday School teacher, with
no one being the wiser. How can a law like that be protecting children? It can’t. All it does is
give us a false sense of security. It’s like the Emperor’s New Clothes. We think a cloak of
safety covers our children, but they are really left naked and vulnerable. The proponents of
this law are so aware of its shortcomings that their catchphrase is “Isn’t it worth it if we
save only one child?” I ask you this. “Why should we ever settle for saving just one child?”
We are a pretty pathetic society if that is the best we can do.
I am positive that it is not the best we can do. Instead of wasting $900,000 a year to
fingerprint free, innocent citizens, we can find real solutions, like teaching programs that
arm our children to help themselves twenty-four hours a day seven days a week, not just the
thirty hours they are in school. We can push for a database that identifies the guilty,
cross - referenced by picture, identification numbers, even modus operandi. We can push for
harsher sentences for real criminals. A woman caught kidnapping an infant from a Maine hospital,
for a second time, was sentenced to 60 days in jail. We can pass laws that make it easier for
schools and other employers to share information about problem employees, without fear of being
sued by the offender. There is no excuse for us to resort to such a lame solution as the mass
fingerprinting of teachers and cafeteria ladies.
Parents want real solutions to this problem. Scapegoating educators and other school employees
is not an acceptable response to the problem of child sexual abuse in the state of Maine.
Therefore, I ask you to repeal the teacher fingerprinting law, and reinstate those teachers who
have bravely given up their positions to fight this offensive, expensive, and ineffective law.
Thank You,
Linda Meadows