Thomas Lee Bear was mistakenly allowed access to High Desert Middle School in 2022 to use the restroom without a background check. 

When a visitor checks in and wants entry at a school office in the Bend-La Pine School District, school officials run the person’s drivers license or other state-issued identification through a check.

The district uses a system called Raptor. It looks for registered sex offenders in all 50 states.

But it only checks some of the registered sex offenders in Oregon. It checks Level 3, which are those deemed of the highest risk to reoffend. Those are the only ones the Oregon State Police lists on its website.

There were 1,758 Level 3 offenders on the website when we checked on Monday. And there were 31,870 sex offenders of lower risk.

Should the district check them all?

State Rep. Emerson Levy, D-Bend, has proposed a bill for the 2025 session that would enable schools to check them all. It’s not clear if the bill then would ban all levels of sex offenders from schools or if that would be something left up to the discretion of schools. We don’t have the proposed text. It is presumably something legislators will discuss.

Employees and volunteers at the school district get a complete background check. But visitors get a lower level of screening. Is that good enough? Tell Rep. Levy what you think. You can email her at: Rep.EmersonLevy@oregonlegislature.gov