Good case comes from Ohio. Since the summer of 2007, free criminal background checks for school bus drivers against Stark County Clerk of Courts records started being offered by the Office of Stark County Clerk of Courts. The program capacity provides to cover 23 public school districts and up 100 private schools across the county, and if criminal information concerning an personal doing bus driving for a school is detected, notification is released now to the appropriate school district. These background checks go way beyond the existing state law providing for a simple search of driving and DUI records database. A similar program previously was implemented with success by the initiative of Stark County Clerk of Courts regarding foster parents.

On the state level, solidly funded bus drivers licensing Program, providing for mandatory background check for school bus drivers, is currently deployed in New York. According to the provisions of this Program, new school bus drivers must undergo fingerprinting and submit to a criminal history check. Individuals with history of certain serious criminal offenses are not allowed to drive a school bus. From the other hand, the New York state law allows school bus drivers to work while their background history is yet being checked.

The general setback of the majority of the existing local background checking plans lies in them normally covering school bus drivers who are already employed, while the FBI believes the greatest threat may be expected from the newest applicants. Just imagine a member of terrorist system getting employment of the sort aiming to seize a school bus full of pupils. FBI is expected to launch its own pre employment screening program for bus driver applicants in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in spring 2009. Anyway, screening each new school bus driver with this high reliability criminal background check program will be taking up to 90 days, which poses real issue. A criminal driving a school bus with kids even during 3 min can already put their lives at risk, not to tell 3 months. Digital fingermark scanning technology could accelerate the work, if implemented.