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Massachusetts to start screening high school referees for criminal records
Does your kid’s ref have a rap sheet?
The organization that governs interscholastic athletics in Massachusetts is about to find out. The Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association’s board of directors unanimously approved a school safety program that will screen the backgrounds of the state’s 8,000 high school referees.
The MIAA, according to the Boston Globe, will begin requiring each referee and umpire who works with student athletes in the commonwealth’s 374 schools to submit to a background check beginning this summer. “This is a big step in terms of becoming more actively engaged with a group of people who have been working with our kids,” Richard Pearson, the MIAA’s associate executive director, told the Globe. Twenty-seven other states require criminal background checks of officials.
The MIAA’s move comes after an investigation by the Globe found that “a small number of referees on the MIAA’s published list of 8,000 certified athletic officials had serious criminal records, including sexual assaults against minors, illegal gun possession, and trafficking narcotics in a school zone.”
Shortly after the story appeared, a high school basketball referee was charged with murdering his wife, also a school basketball official, in their Waltham home.
The MIAA’s move seems like something that should be required in every state, but high school activities associations aren’t flush with cash and background checks are costly. Men and women seeking to officiate high school games will bear the brunt of the costs, which are estimated by the Globe at $280,000-$320,000 for the first year. Screening would be $35-$40 per person, the Globe reports.
Under the new program, game officials may be barred from working in schools for offenses involving violence, threats of violence, drugs, sexual assault, and crimes against minors, among other things. Suspension would be immediate and would last until the legal case is resolved. Disqualified referees can appeal twice to review panels.
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