A background check didn't catch a high school coach's sexual assault record. Then he did it again.

It took Annalie Peterson and a friend a couple of dollars and a few minutes on a background check website to find what her old high school apparently had not.

Mark Kosloski — Peterson's former volleyball coach — had a criminal sexual conduct conviction in Wisconsin.

Peterson was stunned that her former school, North Lakes Academy in Forest Lake, had hired someone with that history. The details of the case, involving the statutory rape of a 16-year-old girl Kosloski coached on a basketball team, were eerily similar to her own.

Kosloski, now in prison for assaulting Peterson and another North Lakes student, clearly had a pattern.

"I think that's when I actually felt like a victim," Peterson said.

Minnesota schools' handling of background and reference checks for teachers and employees is at the center of two high-profile lawsuits, including one from Peterson alleging that North Lakes Academy didn't do enough to vet Kosloski's background to protect students from a convicted sex offender. A separate case going before the state Supreme Court on Tuesday could determine whether districts and charter schools are liable when someone with a problematic past is hired and goes on to abuse students.

The state requires criminal history background checks as part of teacher licensure, and it mandates that districts request such a check during the hiring process. The districts can either go through the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) or through a private agency contracted by the school, which is what North Lakes Academy did when hiring Kosloski.

In Minnesota, the rest of the hiring protocol is largely left up to individual school districts — many of which are scrambling to fill openings amid widespread staffing shortages.

"The whole hiring process varies from district to district and state to state," said Jimmy Adams, executive director of the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification (NASDTEC). "Each location has its own processes and procedures that should be followed, but enforcement can fluctuate."

A case 'we lose sleep over'

At the center of the Supreme Court case are allegations that Harvest Best Academy failed to protect students in its network of north Minneapolis charter schools when it hired a teacher and coach who had been accused of sexual assault by a student at a different school.

No criminal charges were filed against Aaron Hjermstad while he worked at Excell Academy — a Brooklyn Park charter school — but he was put on administrative leave after the allegations and the school didn't renew his contract.

Not long after, Harvest Best's principal hired Hjermstad to be a physical education teacher and volunteer basketball coach. He cleared a background check, but the school didn't contact Excell or other previous employers, according to court records.

In 2020, a student reported that Hjermstad sexually assaulted him while he stayed at the teacher's home. Hjermstad is now serving a 12-year prison sentence for assaulting four pre-teen boys he coached over the span of several years and jobs, and the school is being sued for alleged negligence in failing to follow its own hiring protocols.

Molly Burke, an attorney with Jeff Anderson and Associates working on the case, added: "You ask one question: Would you hire this person again? You get a 'yes' or a 'no,' and it tells you everything you need to know."

A call to Harvest Best was not returned. The Court of Appeals ruled that the school was not liable in the negligent hiring claim, applying statutory immunity, which can include public schools. Anderson's firm appealed that decision to the state Supreme Court.

While the appeals court said its ruling is specific to the facts in the Harvest Best case, attorney Jeff Anderson said it could be used to halt similar lawsuits against schools if it's not overturned by the Supreme Court.

"This is the kind of case we lose sleep over," Anderson said. "We've got a number of cases that we have yet to bring or have brought and they're now throwing this in our face and saying, 'There's nothing you can do legally.' "

Another lawsuit pending

Peterson's case against North Lakes Academy is on appeal pending a Supreme Court decision. That lawsuit accuses the school of failing to require reference checks and lacking any policies for acceptable background check vendors, ignoring widely encouraged best practices in the industry for hiring people who work closely with children.

A federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publication on preventing child sexual abuse within youth-focused organizations encourages employers to go beyond background checks to call references and previous employers and ask applicants screening questions.

"Using background checks alone may give your organization a false sense of security," it says, adding that such checks "will not identify most sexual offenders because most have not been caught."

At the time of Kosloski's hire in 2015, North Lakes Academy used a third-party vendor called Protect My Ministry, a Florida-based company that specializes in background checks of church volunteers. The "basic" package used by the school looked solely at criminal records dating back a decade, according to court records, missing Kosloski's 1999 criminal sexual conduct conviction in Wisconsin.

That case cited five minor victims. Ministry Brands, a parent company of Protect My Ministry, did not return a request for comment.

North Lakes Academy declined to comment, citing the pending case. A school official said in court depositions that staff didn't ask Kosloski for references or call his previous employers. Kosloski said he mentioned to the school's finance director that he had a past assault conviction in Wisconsin — a claim the school denies.

"She said: 'Let's just see what comes up in the report,' " read Kosloski's deposition. When the conviction didn't appear, he started working as a coach.

Peterson said she felt uncomfortable in 2017 when she realized Kosloski was paying closer attention to her than other girls on the varsity volleyball team. But at a school where she had few friends, she said, Kosloski made himself an ally.

After Peterson was kicked off the team for smoking marijuana, she said, Kosloski offered to continue training her at his home. When she felt their relationship was becoming too familiar, Peterson reasoned he was an authority figure who'd been vetted by her school.

"He had that ideal American life — a wife, two kids and lived in a suburb," she said.

Boundaries continued to blur until Kosloski initiated a sexual relationship shortly after Peterson turned 17. He was 43.

A few years later, another former North Lakes Academy student read in an article that police were investigating Kosloski for assaulting a student at the school.

That former student had a "complete breakdown," according to court records, realizing "'it happened to someone else.'"

State procedures vary

The National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification keeps the only centralized database of disciplinary actions against teachers. It gets about 6,000 reports a year about action taken against the 3.5 million teachers across the country, Adams said.

Minnesota alone grants or renews 35,000 to 40,000 teacher licenses each year. The state teacher licensing board has denied, based on background checks run through the state BCA, an average of just 10 per year for the past decade. As part of the license application process, applicants must answer a 12-question conduct survey about their criminal and licensure history.

"We really do want the best, licensed individuals in the classroom with kids," said Emily Busta, a licensing supervisor with the Minnesota Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board.

Still, incidents have occurred that prompted state legislators to examine vetting requirements for schools. In 2017, reports surfaced that a bus driver in the Anoka-Hennepin school district pleaded guilty years earlier to child molestation but was given a stay of adjudication, which kept the charge off his record.

"Almost every year you read about someone who moved from one school to another and it didn't catch up with them until much further down the road," said former Republican Rep. Jenifer Loon.

She sponsored a bill that required stays of adjudication to be reported in BCA criminal checks and mandated that school districts request criminal checks on all employees every three years, among other changes. It didn't pass in 2017, but other states have enacted similar measures.

Missouri requires its education department to annually check all employees against registries and criminal history records, according to a memo from the National Conference of State Legislatures. Florida and Texas maintain a list of people disqualified from working in schools, and New Jersey requires schools to check employment history and contact all previous employers.

'Brushed away'

These days, Peterson spends her time training her new puppy, Waylon, and working as an environmental consultant in Wisconsin, a dream job after growing up fascinated with rocks and nature.

She still struggles to talk about what happened to her during her time at North Lakes Academy, which she's tried to do in therapy and with her boyfriend.

She also wants to know that it won't happen again.

"It's gotten to the point that without awareness," she said, "this could all be brushed away."