Would like to know the dates, school, location(s) within school, incident types, along with information regarding if there was SRO involvement, security officer involvement (in the absence of SRO) or HCPD involvement (note whether it was SRO or security officer or outside police officers):
1)Fights and assaults between students and/or staff, including brief description
2)Drug & alcohol activity (use, possession, sale), including description and type of substance
3)Sexual assault or harassment, including type and location in school
4)Weapons on school grounds, including type
Would also like for you to include a disposition of offending student or staff member as a result of infringement (verbal warning, written warning, suspension, expulsion, jail, transfer etc.).
Responsive to this request, please note no existing report/record contains all of the data sought. Under the MPIA process, and as advised in the Fifteenth Edition of the Maryland Public Information Act Manual created by Maryland’s Office of the Attorney General, an agency is only obligated to produce existing records and is not required to generate new data or summarize data.
As such, available counts of middle school incidents with a disposition of suspension for S19-20, SY20-21, and SY21-22 YTD are attached below.
Dispositions of individual cases (outside of student suspension counts by violation type available above), and resulting actions would require access to and review of private employee and/or student files. Under both FERPA and MPIA GP § 4-313 for student records, as well as MPIA GP § 4-311 which prevents disclosure of personnel records of an individual, we are denying your request to determine disposition of offending students or staff members as a result of an infringement. Additional details such as location within a school, dates of incidents, length of removal, etc. also have the potential to reveal individual student and staff identity.
In regards to arrests, HCPSS provides individual student-level information on arrests to the MSDE, which in turn produces district-level data and breakdowns as requested such as arrest type, location of arrest, resulting suspensions, SRO involvement, etc. which can be found on their website at: http://marylandpublicschools.org/about/Pages/DSFSS/SSSP/StudentArrest/index.aspx. As noted above, under the MPIA process, and as advised in the Fifteenth Edition of the Maryland Public Information Act Manual created by Maryland’s Office of the Attorney General, an agency is only obligated to produce existing records and is not required to generate new data or summarize data. The existing information within HCPSS records is specific to each student/incident, which would require access to and review of individual private student files, which are exempt from disclosure under both FERPA and MPIA GP § 4-313.