Germantown School District presents first standardized disciplinary-data report; principals outline next steps

The Germantown School District Board of Education on July 15 heard an annual disciplinary-data report showing how student incidents were coded across six schools and discussed steps to make reporting more consistent. The report, prepared from the district student information system (Skyward), broke disciplinary entries into a reduced set of categories and showed totals by school and severity. Administrators and principals told the board that coding practices have been narrowed from more than 100 codes three years ago to a smaller, more consistent set but that work remains to standardize definitions for ‘‘major’’ versus ‘‘minor’’ incidents and for some labels that overlap with state-required reporting. Superintendent Dr. Reuter said the district has “scaled down and build[ed] consistent categories K through 12” and that the administrative team will take another year to define them at elementary, middle and high-school levels. He also announced a change in operations for the coming school year: “We change to residency verification every year now, for every grade level,”, a procedural…