When students enroll in public schools, their parents can take certain things for granted.
Their children’s classes will meet state curriculum standards and be free of any religious messages.
Their teachers will hold valid Oregon teaching licenses, have passed criminal background checks and be certified to teach in their subjects.
The state does not demand private-school teachers or classes meet the same standards, and generally has few requirements for those who teach at private schools.
However, some private schools in Central Oregon choose to enforce many of the same rules as their public-school counterparts.
Whether parents consider placing their children in private schools for smaller class sizes or more one-on-one attention, more open learning environments or religious education, they can look for certain things to ensure their children get a similarly regulated education.
Voluntary accreditation is the basic way private schools are regulated.
To become and remain accredited, schools must follow the accrediting association’s standards. Those may include how many credits a student needs to graduate or what skills students must be able to demonstrate in a certain grade.
Bob Fowls, the principal at Trinity Lutheran School in northeast Bend, said the accreditation process keeps his school pushing to get better.
“There are standards we must meet,” he said.
Fowls said his school’s accreditation process takes place every five years, and the school files annual reports and submits to site visits.
“It’s an intensive process,” he said.
Trinity Lutheran is accredited by both the Northwest Association of Accredited Schools and the National Lutheran School Accreditation.
Other schools, like St. Francis of Assisi School and Cascades Academy, are also accredited by the Northwest Association of Accredited Schools.
Morning Star Christian School receives its accreditation from the Northwest Association of Schools, Colleges, and Universities.
For Trinity Lutheran to remain accredited, its teachers must hold a current Oregon license or be working toward one. As a result, nearly every teacher at the school, from kindergarten to high school, holds a license. And although it’s not required, Fowls said he’s working on getting his prekindergarten teachers licensed as well.
Schools don’t have to be accredited, though it lends them more credibility.
“We tell parents that they need to ask these questions if they’re checking out nonpublic schools,” Fowls said.
Oregon teaching standards
All teachers who work in public schools must hold a license, which is overseen by the Teacher Standards and Practices Commission.
That’s not the case at private schools. However, Debbie Leiferman, an evaluator in the teacher licensing division at the Teacher Standards and Practices Commission, said more private schools are moving toward requiring licenses to meet federal guidelines that require teachers to have experience in the subjects they teach.
To be licensed, teachers must obtain a degree from an Oregon teacher education program. Once that is completed, teachers apply to be licensed in Oregon. The application process requires all teachers to be fingerprinted, and those prints are sent to the FBI and the Oregon State Police to be checked against their records.
“It doesn’t matter if they’ve been fingerprinted in another state,” Leiferman said. “We require them to submit those cards to us, and then we send those to the state police and the FBI.”
Applicants can be denied a teaching license if they’ve committed any of a long list of offenses. On that list are offenses, such as murder, sexual abuse, armed robbery and others.
Teachers must renew their licenses every three or five years, depending on what type of license they have. When they go through the renewal process, Leiferman said, their entire application is reviewed, and the background check is conducted again.
If in the interim a teacher has committed a crime that makes him or her ineligible to teach in Oregon, the teacher’s school will be notified.
Jim Widsteen, who heads up the human resources department for Bend-La Pine Schools, said the state has made the process easy to use.
“It’s really neat because it’s all online,” Jim Widsteen said. “You just plug in the name, and it tells you when the license expires and what courses they can teach.”
Once in awhile, Widsteen said, the district hires someone from another state whose license doesn’t come through in time for the start of the school year. While many states will simply give a license to a teacher from another state, Oregon does not, and teachers certified in other states must go through an extensive process to receive their Oregon license.
Background checks
Because nearly all Trinity Lutheran’s teachers have Oregon licenses, they are subject to the same background checks as public-school teachers.
And Fowls hires many graduates of the Concordia college system, which he’s familiar with. He said he can trust their credentials and contact people he knows regarding their performance at the schools.
“As far as we’re concerned our standards are high,” Fowls said. “We’ve been very blessed with top-notch people.”
But the school runs background checks on teachers whose licenses are from other states, along with all nonteaching school employees, from the cooks to the office workers. Since arriving in 1999, he’s never had one come back with a criminal background.
Fowls does not conduct background checks on the parents who volunteer in the classrooms and take students on field trips.
In Bend-La Pine Schools, all volunteers must submit to a criminal background check as well.
Kim Walter, the principal at Seven Peaks School, conducts background checks on every parent volunteer who comes into the school. The school requires its parents to volunteer for 40 hours each year. She knows what she’s looking for in those checks.
“Certainly if there’s a felony in there, or any crimes against children. That’s a no-brainer,” she said.
But she said she’s never had a background check turn up anything on a parent.
And Walter said she relies on the Teacher Standards and Practices Commission to contact her with information about her teachers.
“I think that keeps us accountable,” she said. “For the most part we make every effort to hire only certified teachers.”
She makes exceptions for teachers who have extensive experience, and some teachers start out as classroom aides.
Because the school mostly hires experienced teachers, Walter said reference checks are also a fruitful way to find information about applicants for teaching positions.
Plus, Walter said, the small school would be a hard place to try to get away with anything.
“We’ve only got 20 third-graders, so we’re absolutely held accountable. If a teacher was faking it you’d know it.
“That’s the beauty of a private school,” she said. “Parents are always in there. There’s always other adults there.
“When you choose a private school, you value every minute of every day, so those parents are holding us more accountable.”