Requestor
Andrew Doumaux
Requested Information
Disciplinary Referral Forms submitted during the current School Year (2023-2024) and previous School Year (2022-2023) at Guilford Elementary School.
• Date of Incident
• Staff Member / Referrer
• MSDE Category
• Behavior-related offense / Violation
• Assigned intervention and consequence, including no consequence (Disciplinary Action)
Please provide data on all office referrals that have been submitted, and not merely ones that resulted in a consequence.
• Date of Incident
• Staff Member / Referrer
• MSDE Category
• Behavior-related offense / Violation
• Assigned intervention and consequence, including no consequence (Disciplinary Action)
Please provide data on all office referrals that have been submitted, and not merely ones that resulted in a consequence.
Date Received
Status
Complete
Responsive Documents
Responsive to this request, please find attached requested data from an available summary report on office disciplinary reports for the current and past school years from Guilford Elementary School. Please note, this report only reflects those referrals for which a student violation was identified. When comparing year over year referrals, it should also be noted that changes to the HCPSS student code of conduct went into effect July 1, 2023 (between SY23 and SY24) that will have an impact on the volume of referrals. Specifically, office disciplinary reports were not used for attendance violations as of SY23-24, whereas previous years did include them.
HCPSS must protect against the potential disclosures of personally identifiable information about students as required by both the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA), which restricts access to student records, and MPIA GP § 4-313, which prevents disclosure of school district records pertaining to individual students. In accordance, given this report contains information on an incident-specific level about individual student discipline, the addition of grade has the potential to reveal educational records. As such, we have included this data point on a separate sheet. Additionally, unlike MPIA 2023-128 which reflected data at the high school level where teachers have multiple classes/students from various grades throughout the day, the inclusion of incident date for an elementary school has the potential to reveal educational records given the connection to a specific staff member/classroom. As such, we have also included this data point on a separate sheet. Lastly, the request for a “unique identifier for each Disciplinary Referral Form to allow for easy deduplication/associating multiple lines to the same referral form” is denied based on the direct link to an individual student/incident. What we can provide at the bottom of this column per year is the total unique incidents/referrals and students represented as multiple violations of the code of conduct may be represented in a single form. No record of location is included in the summary report. HCPSS has made substantial efforts to ensure the accuracy of this information; however, data collection and reporting is consistently subject to change. Please be mindful when comparing data as many variances can occur between reports based on date pulled, parameters used, categories included, etc.
HCPSS must protect against the potential disclosures of personally identifiable information about students as required by both the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA), which restricts access to student records, and MPIA GP § 4-313, which prevents disclosure of school district records pertaining to individual students. In accordance, given this report contains information on an incident-specific level about individual student discipline, the addition of grade has the potential to reveal educational records. As such, we have included this data point on a separate sheet. Additionally, unlike MPIA 2023-128 which reflected data at the high school level where teachers have multiple classes/students from various grades throughout the day, the inclusion of incident date for an elementary school has the potential to reveal educational records given the connection to a specific staff member/classroom. As such, we have also included this data point on a separate sheet. Lastly, the request for a “unique identifier for each Disciplinary Referral Form to allow for easy deduplication/associating multiple lines to the same referral form” is denied based on the direct link to an individual student/incident. What we can provide at the bottom of this column per year is the total unique incidents/referrals and students represented as multiple violations of the code of conduct may be represented in a single form. No record of location is included in the summary report. HCPSS has made substantial efforts to ensure the accuracy of this information; however, data collection and reporting is consistently subject to change. Please be mindful when comparing data as many variances can occur between reports based on date pulled, parameters used, categories included, etc.