 was hired at Warren Easton Charter High School in New Orleans. Heather Harper, a spokesperson for the school, said Charles was employed as a teacher at Warren Easton from August to September of this year.
Harper would not provide details of why Charles left the school or whether she had a background check prior to being hired, but said that “generally speaking” the school uses the state background check system as required by law.
Then in November Charles was hired as a Spanish teacher at Sarah T. Reed High School in New Orleans, said Tara Johnson, interim CEO of Einstein Charter Schools, the charter management organization that governs the school.
Charles went through onboarding and had been in the classroom with students and an instructional coach for five days, after which Charles "was no longer employed by Einstein," Johnson said.
She was an employee for about two weeks. Johnson, who stressed that all Einstein employees undergo a background check, would not comment on whether Charles' background check had been returned prior to her hiring or whether the school conducted Google searches.
Charles could not be reached for comment for this story.
Background checks required
Under state law, potential teachers, substitutes, bus drivers, janitors or other school employees who might come in contact with children must complete a background check through the Louisiana Bureau of Criminal Identification and Information.
Lt. Robert Fontenot, of the Louisiana State Police, said the agency looks for criminal history in state and federal databases for teacher background checks.
"If properly processed, arrests that occur in other states will be discovered as part of the background check process," he said in an email.
If an applicant does not have an active teaching certificate — not a requirement for charter schools — they must undergo an additional “teacher authorization” check with the Louisiana Department of Education. This is designed to prevent people who have lost their licenses from hopping between districts or charter schools but doesn’t catch people who have lost licenses in other states, said Sarah Vandergriff Kelly, legal and policy director for the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools.
Additionally, under employment laws, employers are heavily restricted in how much they can ask an applicant’s previous employers, Vandergriff Kelly said.
The National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification maintains a national clearinghouse of teachers who have lost their license, said Phillip Rogers, the organization's executive director. Rogers said schools should use the clearinghouse along with criminal background checks and calling past employers to screen employees.
Ideally schools would use it as a first check before looking into a candidate's criminal history and contacting past employers, Rogers said.
Because New Orleans is an all-charter school district, there is no central hiring office. Each charter organization handles its own hiring, which means an unqualified applicant at one school could apply at another and possibly be hired.
Schools in a hiring crunch
In 2018, state law that explicitly OK'd the hiring of employees pending a background check was removed, though law does not ban the practice.
Guidance for charter schools found on the Department of Education website says that potential employees may be hired pending the results of the Bureau of Criminal Identification background check.
But that can be risky. In 2021, East Baton Rouge Parish hired a man who had been convicted of a felony to teach in an elementary school classroom. He was fired amid the ensuing controversy.
Earlier this year, state officials said delays in background checks were causing delays in the hiring process. Fontenot said LSP is not experiencing abnormal wait times but that the agency is replacing the "applicant processing system," which will speed up the process once completed.
But with the ongoing teacher shortage, schools may be more willing to hire teachers before their background checks are returned.
“With the teacher shortage crunch, everyone is eager to hire someone,” Vandergriff Kelly said.
Fontenot said "numerous variables" can add to the length of time it takes to process a background check, but that in-person fingerprint based background checks take 3-5 business days to process and those received via mail take between 25-40 days.
Rogers was unsurprised that Charles easily moved between charter schools and said that it "happens regularly."
"What's surprising is they caught her — typically they'll stay there long enough to get in trouble again," he said.Healthcare end users are becoming savvier and have more control over their choice of treatment and medication. With the numerous sources available on the internet, medical information is never more than a click away. Cutting through the noise and building end-user engagement should be a major priority for any pharma company, but for many, there is still a long way to go. Organizations that capitalize on these opportunities will enjoy better customer outreach and more successful campaigns overall.
Beyond the shift in healthcare consumer behavior and activity, there are plenty of other reasons for pharma companies to prioritize engagement through digital channels. One of the most pressing factors is how restrictive pharmaceutical sales practices have become -- particularly in regard to how much contact physicians will allow.
According to a 2015 AccessMonitor and ZS jointly-published report, 53 percent of physicians in the United States place moderate-to-severe restrictions on pharma sales visits, marking the first time that figure had exceeded 50 percent since the organizations began tracking data in 2008.
In fact, the AccessMonitor and ZS researchers revealed that figure steadily decreased each year between 2008 and 2015, and they did not expect that trend to abate anytime soon.
"The pharmaceutical industry is in the middle of a fast, steady decline in physician access -- and we expect this pattern to continue for the foreseeable future," said ZS managing principal Pratap Khedkar. "Even traditionally rep-friendly physicians now limit sales rep access."
There are several factors at play here, but perhaps the most disruptive has been the industry's increased mergers and acquisitions activity. Physicians who once had total control over their practices' policies on sales rep access now acquiesce to decisions from their ownership groups.
To cope with these changes, AccessMonitor and ZS researchers recommended that pharma companies move away from their traditional sales and outreach models and invest in multi-channel strategies. Those include digital platforms like social media and mobile applications.
Despite the clear call to make digital engagement a priority, many pharma firms continue to heavily rely upon old sales models. According to McKinsey & Company, pharma brands routinely spend as much as 60 percent of their sales budgets on field representatives.
By getting more strategic with budget spend, targeting digital channels and leveraging available audience and end-user data, pharma companies can chart a path through all of this industry upheaval.
As McKinsey & Company noted, pharma firms already have a great deal of data to work with before investing in any data management and analytics solutions, so they're building on a rock-solid foundation.
This may feel like uncharted territory for the pharmaceutical industry, but there's an incredible opportunity here to considerably increase end-user engagement across digital channels. To capitalize on current circumstances, companies need to provide people with the information and guidance they're looking for. Econsultancy recommended taking an outcome-based approach to digital engagement, giving users informed, holistic treatment recommendations, even if they don't necessarily push a specific brand.
It's all about building up consumer trust and industry authority. If end users believe your brand will give the unvarnished truth regarding healthcare treatment and medicine, they will keep coming back whenever a question arises. Consumers will view your brand in a positive light and associate it with strong medical expertise. That will prove invaluable when it comes time for patients to choose their course of treatment and medicine. People are more informed than ever when walking into a doctor's office and can dictate some of the specifics when it comes to their healthcare.
By collecting data on end-user behavior and preferences, pharma companies can make every interaction more personalized and targeted. No one wants to feel like they're dealing with a faceless organization, especially when it comes to their health. Data-driven engagement strategies can provide a personal touch that has been severely lacking in the industry to date.
More so than other industries, healthcare and pharma companies face major regulatory hurdles at just about every corner. The comprehensive protections placed over electronic healthcare records and patient data can dissuade pharma executives from dipping their toes into the analytics pool.
Although those concerns are certainly justified, they shouldn't stand in the way of end-user engagement. According to McKinsey & Company, 30 percent of pharmaceutical executives believe compliance practices will adapt to make multi-channel engagement practices more tenable in the future.
But why wait? Digital engagement success can be achieved now and today as long as companies use software tools and work with vendors that are HIPAA-certified themselves. Akamai's customer identity and access management (CIAM) platform, for instance, supports compliance with both HIPAA and HITECH regulations, making it an ideal central command center for healthcare data management needs.
The pharma world is going digital, and there's no turning back. With the right tools to meet unique industry challenges, any organization can find a path to success and strong end-user engagement.As a Silicon Valley startup, MojoRank is developing the next-generation AI technology that will revolutionize the way talents and opportunities find each other. We are looking for an ambitious, passionate, and world-class Senior NLP Data Scientist to take our technology to the next level.
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