District presents HIB and discipline data; board discusses freshman‑focused interventions and staff shortages

Director Callahan presented a two‑year comparison of discipline and HIB reports to the Greater Egg Harbor Regional High School District board and described how the district reviews and responds to incidents.

Callahan said the district records incidents and then reviews them through an investigative process; she emphasized that findings go through multiple levels of review. “These findings are going through 4 sets of eyes,” she said, explaining that district staff sometimes return reports to a building for additional information or to recommend different discipline. “There are times I will kick it back. There have been times I've kicked it back and said, no. I want more discipline on this, or I think there's another component to this.”

Officials discussed data patterns, with the district running twice‑yearly spreadsheets that break incidents down by grade, gender, race and classification. Callahan and other administrators identified concentrated “pockets” of incidents among freshmen at particular schools in recent years and described a district effort to adjust programming to address those cohorts.

The board and staff also noted operational constraints. The district reported it is in its third occurrence in five years of a leave taken by a school psychologist, which limits the district’s capacity for investigations and follow‑up. “This is currently our third year in 5 where there is a leave being taken by one of our school psychologists. So that impacts the documentation also… that extra stuff may not be getting done because we are 1 short across the district,” a presenter said.

Board members asked whether additional contextual information — such as recent staffing changes at a building or local training — would help the board interpret year‑to‑year differences. The district responded that they can provide school‑level context and said they had redesigned the freshman seminar program over the summer to try to reach incoming ninth graders earlier and build positive relationships.

District staff described other specific trends noted in reports, including weight‑based insults at school events and incidents where multiple identifying characteristics might be checked on a report (for example, appearance and race). The presenters said the district tries to integrate student voice into programming and will work with principals to bring a broader set of students into improvement efforts.

No formal board action was taken on the presentation during the meeting; directors described follow‑up work for principals and district administrators.