Improving background misconduct checks at schools with networks & AI
Creating inter-school networks and improving form submissions with AI
Inter-school employee background and misconduct checks have many points of failure. For example, a new employee may intentionally choose to skip completing form WA-1588 for a previous employer where there was an investigation of misconduct to avoid sharing information about that incident with the new employer.
As privacy laws around the release of misconduct information are designed, there is no easy way for a school district to notice this omission without careful comparison against a fully comprehensive background check (which rarely includes part time or transient work).
Today we are inviting all districts in Washington State to join our network for free so that they can:
Add past employees to our network so we can run a factual background check and notify new employers if form 1588 was not completed for a previous employer.
Set up the correct signers for incoming requests to the district so that forms are routed to the correct person(s). We use AI to find contacts in HR, but proactively setting this maximizes privacy and safety.
We're working to make this network as comprehensive as possible, and have already started to work with schools outside of the state.
The second point of failure that we’ve found after launching Robinform is that many of the forms employees completed often contained missing or incorrect information. For example, if an employee could not find the correct email or fax number for the school district that previously employed them, they would enter N/A or “please call XXX-XXX-XXXX” in those fields, which interrupted the automatic process of sending an email to that school district with the form for signature.
We just added a “Find employer info” for each previous employer that asks employees to enter the website for the organization and uses that website to auto-complete the form, as shown below:
This gives a more reliable way to make sure emails, faxes, and calls make it to the right organization. And with the inter-school network we’re building, we have the ability to intercept these inputs and replace them with “signers” designated by the organizations that join to maximize privacy and safety.
More to come.