You’re a sex offender? You can work in a New York religious School!

We worry about the external threat from violent extremists.

We respond with security bollards to protect our synagogues, yeshivas, and all Jewish institutions.

What’s a bollard? A bollard is a physical barrier designed to prevent vehicle traffic. Bollards are 3-4 foot metal posts positioned to define boundaries, and provide protection for buildings. Bollards offer protection against car rammings.

Fingerprints are human bollards. Fingerprints deter crime, and also solve crime. No two sets of fingerprints are alike. In the ancient world, thumb prints were identifiers of human beings in Babylon, the Middle East, and China. More recently, starting in the 1800s, credit is given to such scientists as Galton, Faulds, Henry, Herschel, and Vucetich as the modern discoverers of the fingerprint as a human identifier. Sir Francis Galton of England is particularly known for classifying three distinct fingerprint patterns – loops, whorls, and arches.

Here in the United States, it is the New York State government which first began to utilize fingerprints as an identifier for both criminal and civil purposes, starting around 1902. The Federal Bureau of Investigation began collecting fingerprints in 1924. The FBI now has a database of tens of millions of fingerprints.

The FBI database is today utilized for both criminal and civil purposes. If you are arrested, the police will submit your fingerprints to the FBI, to determine whether you have a prior criminal conviction. Are you a repeat criminal offender? The police, the D.A., and the court will take that into account.

Additionally, some employers will fingerprint their job applicants.  Employers who are engaged with vulnerable populations, such as schools and hospitals, routinely fingerprint their job applicants, so as to avoid hiring convicted sex offenders, violent offenders, and other persons with serious criminal histories.

There are also federal and state laws which require job applicant fingerprinting for some employers. The fingerprinting is not optional. All 50 states require public school employee fingerprinting. Law enforcement employers are required to fingerprint.  All hazardous material truckers must be fingerprinted – terrorism is a threat.  There are other examples.

What about the k-12 nonpublic schools and fingerprinting – the yeshivas, all religious schools, all private schools? There is a mixed picture.

America’s nonpublic schools educate about 4.7 million children, or 12.7 percent of the total. Sixteen states – Alabama, California, Connecticut, Florida, Louisiana, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Wisconsin – legally require their nonpublic schools to fingerprint, and thereby weed out job applicants with serious criminal histories who should not work near children. These 16 states, which include some big states, represent about one-half the total of the entire U.S. population.

Thanks to mandatory fingerprinting, these 16 states have successfully barred hundreds of murderers, sex offenders, violent offenders, and other risky miscreants from working in their religious and private schools.

Also – the very existence of mandatory fingerprinting has undoubtedly deterred many persons with serious criminal histories from even applying for employment in the nonpublic schools.

What is the situation in New York?  Not good.

In the mid-1930s, the New York State Legislature enacted a law which prohibits private employers, except for hospitals, from fingerprinting their employees, unless there is another law permitting or requiring it. A combination of disparate political factors influenced the passage of this law. The overeager FBI wanted to fingerprint every American in the country, and there was pushback. Additionally, union-management relations were especially tense in the 1930s. The result was a law, Labor Law section 201-a, which prohibits fingerprinting for nearly all private employers.

Meanwhile, society has changed. Today, the U.S. Justice Department describes its “Project Safe Childhood” as a “nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse”. Arrests and convictions of child sex abusers are a daily occurrence, duly reported in the media. A typical headline is, “More than 100 NYC educators accused of sexual relationships, communications with students as DOE finally mulls a crackdown”, N.Y. Post, January 25, 2025.

This situation did not exist in the 1930s nor prior.

Currently, there are 800,000 registered sex offenders in the United States. There are 40,000 in New York State. These sex offenders represent persons who have been convicted of serious sex crimes, served their sentences, and are released into society as registered sex offenders who can be identified on public Internet registries.

The intense public focus on child sex crime, particularly occurring in schools and houses of worship, first began in 2002, when the Boston Globe newspaper exposed child sex abuse in religious schools and houses of worship. Victims spoke up loud and clear. Many state legislatures swiftly responded with “Megan’s Law” sex offender registries, mandated child abuse reporting laws, mandated child abuse education for school employees, and job applicant fingerprinting. Statutes of limitation for both criminal and civil cases were relaxed or eliminated. The New York courts are now filled with thousands of child sex abuse cases.

As a keen observer and participant in the legislative process in New York, I can testify that progress has been slow. True, some very helpful laws have been enacted, but work remains. What work? I will explain.

Time flies. It was 20 years ago, in 2006, that I contacted NYS State Senator Dean Skelos. I’m an attorney, and I was handling a civil case in which a teacher’s aide molested a child in a religious school. The school did not background-check the teacher’s aide. The man was arrested, and it was then discovered that he had a prior conviction for child sex abuse. This man now, for a second time, was convicted of child sex abuse.

Handling this case, I learned that New York public schools were legally required to fingerprint and background check, but under that 1930s law, nonpublic schools were barred from doing so. I wrote Senator Skelos a long letter, and telephoned. I was asked to and did organize a phone conference with interested parties. I persuaded the ultra-orthodox Jewish group, Agudath Israel, to participate. Their in-house counsel Mordecai Biser, of blessed memory, was on the phone call, as was a leading Catholic representative. State legislative lawyer John Conway did a splendid job leading the discussion. We all agreed in our conference call – the old 1930s law prohibiting nonpublic school fingerprinting had to be modified. A bill would be introduced allowing fingerprinting.

Senator Skelos also promised that if the bill passes, the following year a new bill would be introduced making the fingerprinting mandatory.

The bill allowing fingerprinting did pass in 2006, sponsored by Senator Skelos and Assemblyman Harvey Weisenberg – NYS Education Law section 3001-d. A handful of nonpublic schools began to fingerprint. A few job applicants with serious criminal histories were rejected.

Senator Skelos also kept his promise, and the next year, 2007, the mandatory fingerprint bill was introduced, and passed the Senate, 60-1. Alack and alas, however, the powerful Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver opposed the bill. Silver did not allow the bill to be voted upon by either the Assembly, or even any Assembly Committee.

After 2007, the Skelos/Weisenberg bill died year-after-year. After a few more years, Assemblyman Dov Hikind, Senator Todd Kaminsky, and a few others stepped in, and also sponsored the bill, but the bill kept dying.

Next, the Wall Street Journal weighed in with a helpful, supportive article, on October 29, 2018. Their education reporter Leslie Brody informed that 93 nonpublic schools were fingerprinting their job applicants, and that the NYS Education Department denied clearance for employment to 21 of them, based on their serious criminal histories.

There are approximately 1,800 nonpublic schools in NYS, educating 420,000 children, about 16 percent of the total.   Clearly, 93 out of 1,800 nonpublic schools fingerprinting is not enough.

The NYS Legislature did notice the WSJ article, and the NYS Senate again passed the mandatory nonpublic school fingerprint bill, 61-0, in 2019. Nevertheless, once again, the Assembly refused to vote, and the bill died.

So here we stand in 2026 – as bizarre as it may seem, convicted sex offenders and murderers can, without detection, apply for and receive employment in New York’s nonpublic schools.

Nonpublic school job applicant fingerprinting is now, legally, only optional in New York. Not legally mandatory.

Where do we go from here? Now what? New York’s religious and private school children remain mostly unprotected from attending their schools alongside risky school employees who possess serious criminal histories.

“Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants” – so said the wise lawyer Louis Brandeis in a 1913 article, arguing that publicity is a remedy for social and industrial “diseases”.  Brandeis became a U.S. Supreme Court Justice in 1916.

New York State has a Freedom of Information Law, and it is a powerful tool for shedding light on social diseases – such as child sex abuse in our nonpublic schools.

Let us examine some results from my 2025 FOIL request to the NYS Education Department. I was delivered nearly 1,000 pages.

State Ed informed me that 215 nonpublic schools were fingerprinting their job applicants, and among those, 159 applicants were rejected based on their serious criminal histories.

Here are some eye-opening examples of the nonpublic school job applicants rejected by State Ed:

1. Harlem Village Academy. Buildings and grounds job applicant rejected. Eleven criminal convictions, including manslaughter and weapon possession.
2. Speyer Legacy School. Cafeteria staff job applicant rejected. Three criminal convictions, including attempted murder, drug sale, and assault.
3. Waldorf School of Garden City. School bus monitor job applicant rejected. Fourteen criminal convictions, including seven petit larceny convictions.
4. Horace Mann Upper School. Cafeteria staff job applicant rejected. Sixteen criminal convictions, including four public lewdness convictions.
5. Avenues New York. Contractor job applicant rejected. Twelve criminal convictions, including, weapons possession, assault, theft, drugs, strangulation.
6. Dwight School. Buildings and grounds job applicant rejected. Fourteen criminal convictions, including, menacing, drugs, theft, assault, weapon possession.
7. Dalton School. Buildings and grounds job applicant rejected. Three criminal convictions, including, DWI, drugs.
8. Knox School. Support staff job applicant rejected. Two criminal convictions. Sex offense against child, and burglary.
9. Notre Dame Bishop Gibbons School. Job applicant for coach rejected. Two criminal convictions, including child endangerment and burglary.
10. Lycee Francais De New York. Buildings and grounds job applicant. Twelve illegal gambling criminal convictions.
11. Horace Mann Upper School. Buildings and grounds job applicant. Seven criminal convictions, including sex abuse, drugs, and assault.
12. Hawthorne Country Day School. Teacher’s aide job applicant. Three criminal convictions, including, assault, larceny, and weapon possession.
13. Children’s Learning Center, Nassau County. Support staff job applicant. Seven criminal convictions, including five larceny convictions.
14. Horace Mann Upper School. Cafeteria staff job applicant. Twenty criminal convictions, including child cruelty, six theft convictions, seven drug convictions, and battery.
15. Fieldston Ethical Culture Middle School. Support staff job applicant. Criminal conviction for “gross sexual imposition”.
16. All Saints Catholic Academy. Support staff job applicant. Seven criminal convictions, including for stalking, four criminal contempts, and two larceny.
17. Saint Ann’s School. Teaching assistant job applicant. Three criminal convictions, including, endangering a disabled person, fraud, and larceny.
18. Rudolf Steiner School. Teacher aide job applicant. Sexual battery conviction.

Meanwhile, persons with prior criminal histories continue to be employed in schools, and abuse children. Some recent examples, culled from the media:

1. Ovzie Cannon, employed as a “youth support specialist” at the State-operated Brentwood Residential Center for girls in Long Island, pled guilty in December 2023 for raping a resident. He had previous convictions for attempted robbery and criminal mischief.
2. Long Island school bus driver Giovanny Campos was arrested in October 2024, for raping a student. He pled guilty. He faced previous sex abuse allegations.
3. Math teacher Winston Nguyen worked at the St. Ann’s School in Brooklyn. He had a previous criminal conviction for stealing $300,000 from an elderly couple. While at the school, he was arrested for soliciting lewd images from students. He pled guilty in 2025.

The private Jewish schools are especially lagging in fingerprinting their job applicants. There are about 325 private Jewish schools in NYS, educating 140,000 children, and according to the State Ed FOIL response, only thirteen Jewish schools are fingerprinting – Abraham Heschel, Emet Classical Academy, Hannah Senesh Community School, Kulanu Academy, Leffell, Luria Academy, Manhattan Day School, Mazel Day School, North Shore Hebrew Academy, Ramaz, Shefa, Shema Koleinu, and Stella K. Abraham.

Meanwhile, the web sites of the ultra-orthodox Jewish group, Agudath Israel, and the modern-centrist, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, are silent for job applicant fingerprinting.

The Orthodox Union silence is particularly puzzling. In 2013, Yeshiva University retained the big law firm Sullivan & Cromwell to investigate, report upon, and make recommendations as to the sex abuse occurring at their Y.U. high school. The law firm issued a 53-page public report specifically recommending the fingerprinting of all job applicants.

In addition, a few years prior, in 2007, the modern-centrist orthodox Rabbinical Council of America enacted a Resolution endorsing legally mandated employee fingerprinting. I was the proponent.  The R.C.A. is sometimes referred to as the rabbinic arm of the Orthodox Union.

Clearly, the RCA Resolution, and the Sullivan and Cromwell report, are being ignored.

On the other hand, the New York State Association of Independent Schools, representing more than 200 private schools, recommends on their website:

“To Prevent Sexual Misconduct, the School Engages in: Hiring Practices that Strengthen the Screening of Potential and Current Employees • Utilize the State of New York fingerprinting procedures for all newly hired personnel. • Develop and implement a clear, written, consistently applied, hiring policy and other procedures which include requiring the use of an employment application for all applicants as well as the use of a checklist of vetting procedures which include reference and criminal background checks, a social security check, academic and employment history verification, and other steps to ensure the safety of personnel such as social media activity, status of teaching licenses, and driving record status.”

The Archdioceses of New York, Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island all require school employee and volunteer background checks, as per their websites.  Many Catholic schools fingerprint, and others perform name-based criminal history searches through private companies.

How prevalent is child sex abuse in our schools? Exact numbers do not exist, but there are credible estimates. A 156-page and well-publicized 2004 U.S. Education Department report, “Educator Sexual Misconduct”, authored by Prof. Charol Shakeshaft, estimates that 9.6 percent of all k-12 students are sexually abused by school personnel. The report makes multiple recommendations for preventing abuse – including, mandatory job applicant fingerprinting in all public and private schools.

Despite all of the evidence pointing to the need for mandatory nonpublic school fingerprinting, last year, for the first time since 2007, a mandatory fingerprint bill for nonpublic schools was not sponsored by any New York State legislator.

This situation cries out for change. New York State, with its large population of nonpublic school children, needs to join the list of the 16 states which do mandate fingerprinting for both public and nonpublic school job applicants.  Our 420,000 nonpublic school children deserve protection from risky persons, with serious criminal histories, who should not work near children.  When only 215 out of the 1,800 nonpublic schools in New York fingerprint – we need a law that requires the fingerprinting.

Pay attention, Albany.  Pay attention, all New Yorkers.  The bill needs sponsors and supporters, passage in both the Senate and Assembly, and signature by the Governor.