C. J. Huff to KZRG: After child porn arrests, R-8 District ramping up screening

The recent guilty plea of a tech department employee who tried to have sex with an underage girl and last week's arrest of a former South Middle School eighth grade science teacher who allegedly videotaped himself having sex with a minor have Joplin R-8 Superintendent C. J. Huff thinking it is time to do something different in the district's hiring practices:

Joplin Superintendent Dr. CJ Huff tells News Talk KZRG they have ramped up their screening.
"Some of that was driven by state and federal laws, and some of that was just part of improving our practices. In addition to passing a background check by the Missouri Highway Patrol, we also do a search for sexual predators."
Huff says Joplin school employees keep their eyes open for anything that might be inappropriate, but adds that both employees in question had no prior criminal history.

Interestingly enough, the R-8 School District never felt the need to confiscate the computers of either of the two employees caught up in child sex crimes, but did take the computer of a former East Middle School eighth grade communication arts teacher who wrote a novel that was critical of superintendents like C. J. Huff.

A tip to C. J. Huff and R-8 Administration, there are no guarantees of what you are going to get when you hire a teacher, but when you have to hire 100 teachers each of the last two years, it makes it that much easier that someone unsavory will slip through the cracks.