Kansas Senate Bill SB246

Kansas 2025-2026 Regular Session

• Introduced: 2/7/25
• Refer: 2/10/25

Caption

Requiring all applicants for teaching licenses and certificates and employees of a school district or public innovative district to submit to a criminal history record check and creating the criminal history record check reimbursement fund for certain state and criminal history record checks conducted by the Kansas department for aging and disability services.

Summary

SB 246 expands criminal history record check requirements for Kansas education personnel and creates a reimbursement mechanism for certain background checks administered by the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services. The bill requires the State Board of Education to fingerprint and conduct state and national criminal history record checks on all applicants for teaching licenses or certificates, including renewals and expired-license renewals, and bars licensure for applicants who do not comply. It also requires school district employees with direct student contact who are not already covered by the licensure requirement to undergo fingerprint-based state and national checks before beginning work, and then every five years thereafter. Similar recurring background-check requirements are added for employees of public innovative districts. The bill also requires covered school employees and public innovative district employees to report certain convictions or criminal diversion agreements to their employer within 30 days, with failure to report treated as a class B nonperson misdemeanor. In addition, it amends the state criminal-history-check statute to expressly authorize the Kansas Bureau of Investigation to share specified criminal history information with the State Board of Education, school districts, and public innovative districts for licensing and employment decisions involving school personnel. The bill preserves existing disqualification rules for serious offenses and allows the State Board of Education to consider rehabilitation in some cases after a hearing. Beyond the education provisions, SB 246 creates the criminal history record check reimbursement fund in the state treasury, administered by the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services. The fund is designed to reimburse the department for the cost of background checks conducted for certain aging and disability services-related screenings, with annual transfers from the state general fund based on the net cost after fees collected. The bill also makes criminal history information received under the amended statute confidential, generally exempt from the Kansas Open Records Act, and subject to criminal penalties for unauthorized disclosure or use. The bill’s overall impact is to tighten and standardize background-screening requirements for school employees and teaching credential applicants while clarifying information-sharing authority among state agencies. It would amend K.S.A. 72-2165, 72-4223, and K.S.A. 2024 Supp. 22-4714, and repeal the existing versions of those statutes. It also affects the State Board of Education, school districts, public innovative districts, KBI, and KDADS by imposing new screening, reporting, confidentiality, and reimbursement procedures. No committee transcripts or recorded votes were provided, so there is no documented floor or committee debate to gauge sentiment directly. Based on the bill’s structure and caption, the measure appears to be framed as a school-safety and child-protection bill with administrative funding provisions, and the likely policy emphasis is on ensuring that adults with direct access to students are regularly vetted. Potential points of contention would likely center on the cost and administrative burden of repeated background checks, who pays for them, the scope of criminal-history access and confidentiality, and whether the bill’s reporting and disqualification rules are too broad or too restrictive.

Impact

SB 246 would amend Kansas law governing teacher licensure, school-district employment, public innovative districts, and criminal-history record checks. It adds mandatory fingerprint-based state and national background checks for teaching applicants and for school employees with direct student contact, requires recurring five-year checks, authorizes KBI information sharing for those purposes, and creates a state fund to reimburse KDADS for certain background-check costs. It also strengthens reporting obligations for covered employees and preserves criminal penalties for noncompliance and unauthorized disclosure.

Sentiment

No voting history or committee transcript was provided, so there is no direct record of support or opposition. The bill’s caption and provisions suggest a generally protective, child-safety-oriented policy approach, with the likely intent of increasing confidence in school personnel screening. At the same time, the recurring check requirements, fee provisions, and confidentiality rules suggest the measure could draw practical concerns from school districts, applicants, and privacy advocates over cost, implementation, and access to sensitive records.

Contention

The main likely points of contention are the frequency and cost of repeated criminal-history checks, whether applicants or school districts should bear those costs, and the breadth of criminal-history information available to education authorities. Privacy and records-access issues may also arise because the bill makes fingerprint and criminal-history information confidential and creates criminal penalties for misuse. Another possible area of debate is the scope of disqualifying offenses and the extent to which rehabilitation should allow licensure despite prior convictions or diversion agreements.