Teachers Often in Dark on Students’ Records : Education: Despite state disclosure laws, districts fail to share histories. Local officials are becoming cautious in accepting transfers.

Since 1990, state law has required school officials to inform teachers of any student who has caused or attempted to cause serious injury to another person.

Under the law, school districts must provide information to teachers based on records received from law enforcement agencies or other districts.

But Ventura County school officials said that, in many instances, they never know the full history of a new student. They said that when a request is made for a student’s previous records, the information is usually slow in coming or, when it does arrive, is incomplete.

“Oftentimes you don’t know who or what you’re getting,” said Jaime Castellanos, principal of Ventura’s Buena High School.

Castellanos said some schools are reluctant to pass on information about a problem student because they want the youth to get a clean start. Others, he said, hold back information because they are unfamiliar with confidentiality laws and therefore unsure of what they are allowed to give out.

“They’re afraid of a lawsuit,” Castellanos said.

But Ronald Stephens, director of the National School Safety Center in Thousand Oaks, said officials should insist on receiving all available information on new or transfer students. He said teachers should also demand to see a student’s file.

“If I were a teacher, I’d want to know if I had Charlie Manson Jr. in my school and if he was enrolled in my class,” Stephens said.

Information about a pupil’s background can help school officials deal more effectively with a problem student, he said.

“Many youngsters involved in crime and violence are being shipped out to other communities,” Stephens said. “They’re called ‘opportunity transfers.’ There are situations in which opportunity transfers are good. But in many cases you’re simply transporting the problem to a new community.”

As for student crime records, schools are not able to request information directly from a police department. The only way officials can find out about a student’s criminal background is if it is included in their school record.

In cases where a student has been expelled or suspended for committing a crime, a school will usually include that information as part of a student’s academic file, said Howard Freedman, an attorney for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Most officials said that if a problem student tries to enroll in their district, the student is probably not going to get in.

“I have never accepted an expelled student,” said Jerry Barshay, principal of Ventura High.

Keith Wilson, principal of Thousand Oaks High School, said his staff has also become more cautious when it comes to screening new students.

“When something comes across our desk that is suspicious or doesn’t look right, we make contact with the sending school district,” he said.

Wilson said his school has denied several student transfers from Simi Valley and Moorpark school districts this year because the pupils had “problems with the law” and had been suspended.

“If we see juniors or seniors transferring, it automatically raises a red flag,” Wilson said. “You know, ‘Why would an 18-year-old who is a senior be transferring?’ It doesn’t make sense.”

Yet, even Wilson acknowledges that information on a student’s background can easily “slip through the cracks.

“But we are becoming more and more suspicious” of all new students, he said. “Unfortunately, that’s the way it is.”