How Mathnasium Franchisees Build Safe, Qualified Teams with Checkr

For Mathnasium franchise owners like Emily Gohdes in Wisconsin, and Chris Johnson in Oregon, hiring qualified instructors who can work with children is both critical and challenging. These franchisees need to balance finding candidates with strong math skills and excellent people skills —all while managing the day-to-day operations of their learning centers, like ensuring candidates successfully pass a thorough background check.

Emily, a nurse who became a new franchise owner after seeing a need in her community, opened her Mathnasium location in May of 2025 and immediately needed to hire instructors. "I've used Checkr for all of my background checks since opening," she explained. "The process is very quick and streamlined, and if I need support, the response is fast, which is great."

Chris, a veteran franchise owner with 10 years of experience operating two Mathnasium locations, has been using Checkr for over 4 years. As a former educator with 20 years in public schools, he understands the importance of thorough background checks. "We're required to do background checks for all of our employees. Our instructors work with children, so as educators, we need to make sure our employees don't have criminal backgrounds."

Both franchisees chose Checkr from Mathnasium's approved vendor list, with Emily also benefiting from recommendations from fellow franchise owners who had positive experiences with Checkr.

Both franchisees frequently hire high school students as instructors, making Checkr's minor background check capabilities essential. Chris highlighted this as a key improvement: "One other nice thing is the addition of the background checks for minors. Before Checkr, I wasn't always able to get the background checks on minors done as easily."

For Emily, Checkr’s integration with Workstream has made kicking off the background check process much easier. “I just select Checkr and which kind of background check I want to initiate, and it’s kicked off. I don’t have to log into separate systems and manually enter candidate information,” she said. This seamless process allows her to focus on running her new business rather than managing manual background check tasks.

The speed of Checkr's background checks has been crucial for both franchise owners. Chris noted significant improvements in turnaround times: "The background checks seem to come back really quickly, which is nice. I seem to get it back in 24 hours now, whereas in the past, it sometimes took closer to 72 hours."

This speed is particularly important given the competitive hiring environment for quality math instructors. As Chris explained, "It's hard to find that combination of people that are really good at math and really sociable. Sometimes you have to compromise on one of those ends."