Criminal History Review Approvals

All new employees need to receive a Criminal History Review Approval from the Office of Student Protection.

When hiring a new employee, the Director of Human Resources will provide the new employee with a Criminal History Review instruction page. On this page are instructions for new hires who have never worked for a public school district as well as instructions for Archiving of the Fingerprints, which can be used by new hires who have worked for a public NJ school anytime from the 2004-05 school year to the current school year. Those who had a criminal history approval before the 2004-05 school year will not be able to archive. Note: to archive, the new hire must have a PCN number showing on the Applicant Approval Employment History page.

To check to see if this new employee has a PCN Number, log into the Office of Student Protection website: nj.gov/education/crimhist

• Then click on Applicant Approval Employment History (to the right of the page in blue type)
• Enter the new hire’s social security number and date of birth
• Click the Submit button
• On the Applicant Approval Employment History page, if the applicant has a PCN number listed for any position other than Volunteer, then the new hire can archive their fingerprints.
• Note: Volunteer approvals cannot be archived.
  

Once the new hire has been fingerprinted or had the fingerprints archived, it is the responsibility of the HR department to check, usually at least once a week, to see if the criminal history review has been issued.

To check criminal history approvals, you can check individually by social security number and date of birth (as listed above). You can also check by school district to see multiple approvals, then once you know which new staff have approvals, then go into each individually to print out the approvals. To do this:

Log into the Office of Student Protection website: nj.gov/education/crimhist

• Click on Weekly Listing of Approved Applicants (to the right of the page in blue type).
• Fill in the boxes: County ID is 27, District ID is 3370, School ID is 000.
• In the Approval Dates box, click on the down arrow and choose the date you wish to see if approvals have been issued. If checking once a week, you may have to repeat these steps (filling in all of the boxes) multiple times to catch all of the dates for the past week.
• To repeat, click on the box with 3 lines and choose the option Weekly Listing of Approval Applicants.
• If there were no approvals from a specific date, you will get a response “There are no records to report.”
• If there are approvals from a specific date, then you will need to check individually for each approval listed.
• To do this, while on the page showing the individuals that have been approved for a specific approval date, click on the box with the 3 lines and choose Applicant Approval Employment History.
• This will bring you to a page where you will enter the new hire’s social security number and date of birth.
• Then click the Submit button.
• You will then see the page Applicant Approval Employment History. This is the new hire’s criminal history approval. You should see a recent approval date and the approval for County Code 27 and District Code 3370.
• Print this page by clicking on the box with word print.
• Don’t forget to go into ERP and enter the approval on the new hire’s Master Screen.
• File the approval in the new hire’s folder (physical folder and eventually scan into the Archive folder).
  

Sometimes a new hire will choose the wrong district so their criminal history approval is not showing up on the weekly listing. To check this, you should follow the directions for checking individually. Then if you see a recent approval for a different school district (usually Morris School District or Rockaway School District), then you can email the Office of Student Protection at: OfficeofStudentProtection@doe.nj.gov and explain the issue, list the new hire’s name, last four digits of the SS# and request the approval be changed to County Code 27 and District ID 3370, School Code 000. Often, the Office of Student Protection with correct this and the new hire will not have to re-do the criminal history process.