Why coaches and members are screened every month
A screen run at signup answers one question: what was on record that day. At an academy where people train for years, that answer goes stale. Safe Academy 360 runs every screen again each month so it does not.
A screen is a photograph
Most screening, where it happens at all, happens once. A coach is checked when hired. A member is checked, rarely, when they join. From then on the academy is relying on a result that gets older every day, and nobody notices, because nothing on the wall changes.
The people do change. A member who joined three years ago is still on the mat, still in the changing room, still around the kids class that runs before open mat. Whatever has happened in those three years is not in the result from the day they signed up.
What changes between one month and the next
- New registrations are added to public sex offender registries every week, and some are people who already belong to a gym.
- Registrants move between states, and a listing that did not exist in one jurisdiction appears in another.
- State prison records update as people are sentenced and released.
- A registry that did not answer on the day of the first screen answers the next time.
A screen run once sees none of that. A screen run monthly sees it within weeks.
How the monthly screen runs
Every person Safe Academy 360 has screened is screened again each month, in a batch, using the same legal name and date of birth and the same sources: the public sex offender registries of all 58 US jurisdictions and state prison system records. The academy does nothing. There is no reminder to act on and no form to send.
When the repeat screen returns no matching records, the coach's record shows the date it last ran and the date it runs next. When it returns a record for the first time, the same thing happens as on a first screen: the academy's alert contact is emailed, Safe Academy 360 reviewers compare the record with the person, and nothing is decided or published until that review is done. What that review involves.
The repeat is part of the coach credential. Screening is one of the five items every coach holds, and its date advances each month rather than expiring once a year and being forgotten.
What it still cannot do
Repeating a screen does not change what a screen is. It is name based, it sees only what a public source has recorded, and a source that does not answer is silent rather than empty. A person who is not in any registry is simply absent from it, this month and next.
Monthly is a cadence, not a live feed. A record added on the second of the month is found on the next run, not the same day.
No screening catches everyone. Repeat screening closes one specific gap, the gap between signup and today, and leaves every other one where it was.
What to ask any academy
Whether or not an academy is in this program, one question tells you if its screening is a photograph or a process: "How often do you check again?" A good answer names a cadence and says what happens when something new appears. "We checked everyone when they joined" is an honest answer and an incomplete one.
The rest of the questions any parent can ask cover training, written standards, and who else is on the mat.