HCPSS MPIA Request #2018-309

Requested Information
I am requesting a copy of the HCPSS Student Assistance Program Procedures and the HCPSS Suicide Intervention Procedures as defined in the Implementation Procedures, Section (H) (3) (d) and (e) of Policy 9050: https://www.hcpss.org/f/board/policies/9050.pdf

Status
Complete
Responsive Documents
Under MPIA GP § 4-352, an agency may withhold records related to emergency management, including records that are prepared to prevent emergency situations and where inspection may endanger the life or physical safety of an individual. As such, HCPSS has determined that disclosure of two pages within this manual (5 and 16), which contain prescriptive steps and/or interview questions that would be asked of a student suspected of contemplating suicide, could compromise the administration of the assessment with students. In the hands of the public/a student, these could be used to bias responses such that an interviewer could not accurately gain the information needed to assess and prevent future attempts of suicide by an individual. Additionally, under MPIA GP § 4-301(2)(ii) an agency must withhold documents if inspection is contrary to a federal statue or regulation. In this case, the specifics of the interview questions fall under federal copyright protections as they were original works of authorship developed by HCPSS.

*Some request language is summarized to include the requester's specific document requests and legally protected information (such as personally identifiable information of a student) or personal, defamatory and malicious content removed at the discretion of the school system.

**Responses containing legally protected information available only to the person of interest are omitted from the above report.

***Howard County Public Schools reserves the right to remove erroneous or outdated documents from this site.