House Enrolled Act 1462 amended several sections of the Indiana Code focused on safeguarding students and school communities by putting in place a requirement for expanded criminal history checks on all applicants for school employment, establishing a formal reporting process on school employees convicted of one or more felonies listed at IC 20-28-5-8(c), and providing for the development and maintenance of a searchable public data base of teachers and school employees who are convicted of any of those listed felonies.  These requirements go into effect July 1, 2009.  In practical terms, this means that after July 1 all new hires in school corporations, charter schools, and accredited nonpublic schools are subject to an expanded criminal history check. 

Due to statutory changes in the current session, the Office of Charter Schools will be revising the current Criminal History Policy this summer.