Requestor
HoCo Watchdogs
Requested Information
Requesting Disciplinary Referral Forms submitted for school years 2016-17, 2017-18, 2018-19, 2019-20, 2020-21, 2021-22, 2022-23, and 2023-24 for each HCPSS middle school. For each school and school year, please include:
• Date of Incident
• Staff Member / Referrer
• MSDE Category
• Behavior-related offense / Violation
• Assigned intervention and consequence, including no consequence (Disciplinary Action)
• Race/Ethnicity of Student
Please provide data on all office referrals that have been submitted, and not merely ones that resulted in a consequence.
Please send this data in the same format used in response to the more limited scope MPIA request 2023-151 and 2025-059, with the exception of not needing tardiness time information.
• Date of Incident
• Staff Member / Referrer
• MSDE Category
• Behavior-related offense / Violation
• Assigned intervention and consequence, including no consequence (Disciplinary Action)
• Race/Ethnicity of Student
Please provide data on all office referrals that have been submitted, and not merely ones that resulted in a consequence.
Please send this data in the same format used in response to the more limited scope MPIA request 2023-151 and 2025-059, with the exception of not needing tardiness time information.
Date Received
Status
Complete
Responsive Documents
Responsive to this request, please find attached data from an available summary report on office disciplinary reports for SY16-17 through and SY23-24 from all 20 middle schools. Please note, this report only reflects those referrals for which a student violation was identified. No existing report identifies those office referrals submitted but ultimately not resulting in consequence as those are returned to the staff member without tracking. When comparing year over year referrals, school closures during the pandemic will impact the numbers used. 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 race/ethnicity has the potential to reveal educational records. As such, we have included these data points on separate sheets. During SY20-21 where incidents at some schools fall below 10, both incident date and race have been removed to de-identify where low populations have the potential to reveal individual students. 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. Please note, there could be multiple violations of the code of conduct represented in a single student incident/referral, therefore entries represent each violation. No clarification received from requester to continue request.
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 race/ethnicity has the potential to reveal educational records. As such, we have included these data points on separate sheets. During SY20-21 where incidents at some schools fall below 10, both incident date and race have been removed to de-identify where low populations have the potential to reveal individual students. 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. Please note, there could be multiple violations of the code of conduct represented in a single student incident/referral, therefore entries represent each violation. No clarification received from requester to continue request.