Montgomery Board Weighs Access to Student Withdrawal Data

Nicholas Mistretta

MONTGOMERY — A discussion over board access to student withdrawal and exit data prompted a detailed legal explanation from the district’s attorney at the Dec. 16 meeting of the Montgomery Township Board of Education.

Board member Dr. Ting Wang revisited an earlier request for information on how many students leave the district each year and for what reasons. She noted that schools are required to report withdrawals through state-defined school exit/withdrawal codes via the New Jersey Student Longitudinal Data System (NJ SLEDS).

Wang cited two sections of state law — N.J.S.A. 18A:36-19 and 18A:11-1 — which she said entitle board members to access records “meaningful for governance.” She asked whether, in line with those statutes, the district should provide board members with aggregated withdrawal data that have already been submitted to the state.

“I want to be explicit,” Wang said. “This is just talking about the number of students who withdraw by the school exit/withdrawal code. It’s not about any student ID — nothing at an identifiable level. It’s about numbers.”

Attorney: Access depends on public-records rules and confidentiality
Board attorney Vic LaPira responded by first clarifying what had been requested.

“The request is for a document that was submitted to the state through the portal NJ SLEDS,” he said, describing the system as a state data-collection platform that receives “confidential student data [and] confidential personnel file data” directly from the district. “NJ SLEDS — that’s not a public document. It goes right to the state.”

LaPira said he would need to see the exact report or data output to determine what could legally be shared.

He framed the issue using the Open Public Records Act (OPRA) as a guide:

• If the underlying document or a comparable report would be accessible to a member of the public through an OPRA request, he said, “then that same document would be accessible to a board member in the same manner.”
• If it would not be accessible under OPRA, then, in general, it would not automatically be available to an individual board member — unless it was needed for a specific board action.

Board members can sometimes access confidential data, he added, but only when directly tied to a matter on which they must vote.

“For example,” LaPira said, “if you’re voting on a personnel issue and there’s something that’s part of that employee’s personnel file… that would normally be provided in the context of executive session to a board member to review before voting — that would be fine. But if there’s nothing before the board, then it wouldn’t necessarily be accessible.”

He also cautioned that much of the information flowing through NJ SLEDS is likely protected by federal student privacy law (FERPA) or personnel confidentiality rules, particularly if individual students or staff could be identified.

Could an aggregate report be generated?
LaPira noted there is a difference between producing an entirely new document and generating a standard report from an existing system.

Under OPRA, public bodies are generally required to provide records, not create new ones. However, he said courts have held that if a report can be generated with “a couple of keystrokes” — for example, selecting and printing a defined report — it may be treated as producing an existing record rather than creating a new one.

“If [the business administrator] can run that report… and that can be printed out, we can take a look at that and say, ‘Oh, this doesn’t identify any students, this doesn’t provide any information that’s confidential — yes, we can produce it,’” LaPira said. “If that’s not the case and there’s no way to redact it in any meaningful way, then maybe it’s not subject to access.”

He asked Wang to email the specific report or format she had in mind so the administration and legal counsel could review whether it could be generated and whether it would be disclosable.

Board procedure: motion vs. individual request
Board members also discussed how such a request should be handled procedurally.

Because no specific agenda item or vote currently depends on the withdrawal data, LaPira explained that there are essentially two paths:

1. Board Action:
   If a majority of board members believe such information should be collected and shared with the full board on a regular or one-time basis, they may introduce and approve a motion directing the administration to prepare that data.
2. Records / OPRA Framework:
   Alternatively, the request can be treated like an access-to-records request (using OPRA standards) — meaning the district and its attorney must first determine whether the requested report qualifies as a disclosable record, even in aggregated form.

Other districts’ practices raised
During the discussion, board member Vanita Nargund referenced practices in at least one neighboring district, noting that some boards include a monthly “withdrawal report” in their public agendas.

In that example, the report does not list student names or ID numbers, but instead provides entries with a date, grade level, and reason code— such as transferring to another district, earning a GED, or moving out of state or out of the country.

Wang said that is essentially the type of information she is seeking: a yearly summary of how many students withdrew and under which standardized state exit codes, without any personally identifiable details.

Board member, Spina, added that the district’s internal system already tracks broad state-defined categories such as “withdrawn out of state,” “withdrawn out of country,” or “withdrawn to another public school within the state.”

“Even that is great,” Wang replied, indicating that high-level counts by category would meet her goals.

Next step: Legal and administrative review
The discussion concluded with agreement that the next step is for Wang to provide a more precise description of the report she is requesting.

LaPira and the administration will then review:

• Whether such a report can be generated from existing systems with minimal effort; and
• Whether the resulting document, in aggregate and redacted form if necessary, would be legally disclosable under OPRA and privacy laws.

Only after that review, LaPira said, can the board determine if the data can be shared with an individual member or incorporated into future board materials.

Photo Credit: Nicholas Mistretta/headlinenewsmontgomery.com