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USBE outlines changes to incident data collection after 2025 legislation
Summary
Utah State Board of Education staff described efforts to improve school incident data quality, proposed clarifications to infraction codes, and new fields required by Senate Bill 170 and Senate Bill 223 for reporting emergency safety interventions and bullying information.
Utah State Board of Education staff told data conference attendees that the agency is updating how districts report incident and discipline data and will add fields required by 2025 legislation.
The presentation said the state will publish an appendix of clarified infraction-code definitions aimed at principals and staff who enter discipline data. The definitions are intended to reduce the frequent use of the “other/disruption” category and to improve training at the local level.
Why it matters: USBE staff described the change as a quality-control step meant to give local data administrators the same operational definitions so incident types are entered consistently across districts. Staff said the appendix will be added to the UTREx specifications and shared with the Data Governance Board for review this summer.
Staff also described two bills from the 2025 legislative session that add reporting requirements. Senate Bill 170 (school discipline amendments) expands the data required about emergency safety interventions (ESIs) beyond whether physical restraint or seclusion occurred; staff said new fields will include items such as duration and stated purpose and that districts should expect to report those fields once UTREx and SIS vendors implement them. Staff said they are seeking clarification on “alternative intervention” and what counts as “relevant training.”
Senate Bill 223 (bullying amendments) requires that victims be recorded when incidents are coded as bullying, cyberbullying, hazing, or certain harassment infraction types. USBE staff said they intend to add a validation that will require a victim entry when those infraction codes are selected, while providing options where a victim is not in the reporting LEA.
On timing, staff said they expect specification updates to appear in the summer publication of the UTREx specifications and that districts and SIS vendors will likely have an implementation window extending into the 2025–26 school year, with fuller enforcement in 2026–27. Staff said they will work with IT and assessment departments to implement the fields.
Staff cautioned they are still finalizing some definitions and indicated they will present the final appendix to the Data Governance Board. No formal vote or regulatory adoption was recorded during the session.
