Requestor
Glynis Kazanjian
Organization/Agency
Freelance Writer
Requested Information
Good morning. On behalf of the Baltimore Post Examiner, I am submitting a Public Information Act request to receive the following information from Howard County County Public Schools (HCPS) in a timely fashion:
1. For fiscal years 2019 through 2023, please provide the number of HCPS employees (school staff, office staff, other staff) placed on paid administrative leave (meaning: paid leave of any type). Please break this information down by fiscal year and include staff positions and salary ranges for each position.
2. Please provide the number of HCPS staff currently on paid leave for FY 2024, as of July 1, 2023. Please include staff positions and salary ranges for each position.
1. For fiscal years 2019 through 2023, please provide the number of HCPS employees (school staff, office staff, other staff) placed on paid administrative leave (meaning: paid leave of any type). Please break this information down by fiscal year and include staff positions and salary ranges for each position.
2. Please provide the number of HCPS staff currently on paid leave for FY 2024, as of July 1, 2023. Please include staff positions and salary ranges for each position.
Date Received
Status
Complete
Response Notes
Responsive to this request, and per the addition of:
1. Dates the employee was on leave, and whether they returned to work or were terminated;
2. The reason for the leave: medical, for example, or placed on leave due to investigation (forced), or other;
3. Request the school name or employment location the personnel member is associated with.
4. The name of the individual, if allowable.
we have identified two available sets of data below, however neither will have all requested information. Under the MPIA process, and as advised in the Eighteenth 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.
Responsive Documents
This record is from our human resources database which tracks total leave by type, however “paid administrative leave” is used to tag multiple circumstances. Identification of specific reasons per case and salary would require the creation of a new record to cross-reference each individual’s leave entry with the person’s personnel records at the time of being placed on leave. Under MPIA GP § 4-311, which prevents disclosure of personnel records of an individual, and MPIA GP § 4-329 (b), which prevents disclosure of medical or psychological information
about an individual, we are reporting this data by position categories only. Please note, the increase in FY22 and FY23 is the result of the system offering paid administrative leave for employees with a confirmed positive COVID diagnosis.
about an individual, we are reporting this data by position categories only. Please note, the increase in FY22 and FY23 is the result of the system offering paid administrative leave for employees with a confirmed positive COVID diagnosis.
For counts of employees specifically on “forced paid leave,” the Office of Employee and Labor Relations tracks instances of placement on leave for disciplinary and investigatory reasons. Please note, for cases that pertain to allegations of child abuse or neglect, per HCPSS Policy 1030(IV)(F)(3) removal of employees from student access is required until cleared by social services, meaning many of these instances of paid administrative leave are for investigation purposes only as they do not result in findings of misdoing on the part of the employee. This tracking began in August of 2019, thus only contains information for SY2020 and beyond with totals as follows:
August 1, 2019 thru June 30, 2020 = 38
July 1, 2020 thru June 30, 2021 = 12
July 1, 2021 thru June 30, 2022 = 48
July 1, 2022 thru June 30, 2023 = 76
July 1, 2023 thru December 5, 2023 = 48 (of these 13 were on leave as of the date pulled)
The above data is not tracked by position or salary range, and identification of such would require the creation of a new record to cross-reference each individual’s leave entry with the person’s personnel records at the time of being placed on leave. Because position is not identified, this data may also contain instances of leave for lunch recess monitors and substitute teachers, which when under such leave would not be paid leave (given they are hourly and/or temporary employees). Of the requested information that is tracked case-by-case, under MPIA GP § 4-311 which prevents disclosure of personnel records of an individual including discipline, dismissal or any other matter involving an individual employee’s status, we have determined employee names as well as specific incident locations, incident dates, and leave dates have the potential to identify those employees. Even separated from other identifying information regarding each instance of leave, the allegation and outcomes fields contained individualized details that are unable to be consistently redacted in a meaningful way for release. We have provided the Area field as it corresponds to general locations, including school management clusters as well as central/other non-school based locations. Please note, given this tracking is for summary purposes, entries in this field may not be complete.
August 1, 2019 thru June 30, 2020 = 38
July 1, 2020 thru June 30, 2021 = 12
July 1, 2021 thru June 30, 2022 = 48
July 1, 2022 thru June 30, 2023 = 76
July 1, 2023 thru December 5, 2023 = 48 (of these 13 were on leave as of the date pulled)
The above data is not tracked by position or salary range, and identification of such would require the creation of a new record to cross-reference each individual’s leave entry with the person’s personnel records at the time of being placed on leave. Because position is not identified, this data may also contain instances of leave for lunch recess monitors and substitute teachers, which when under such leave would not be paid leave (given they are hourly and/or temporary employees). Of the requested information that is tracked case-by-case, under MPIA GP § 4-311 which prevents disclosure of personnel records of an individual including discipline, dismissal or any other matter involving an individual employee’s status, we have determined employee names as well as specific incident locations, incident dates, and leave dates have the potential to identify those employees. Even separated from other identifying information regarding each instance of leave, the allegation and outcomes fields contained individualized details that are unable to be consistently redacted in a meaningful way for release. We have provided the Area field as it corresponds to general locations, including school management clusters as well as central/other non-school based locations. Please note, given this tracking is for summary purposes, entries in this field may not be complete.