Evaluating a School-based Social and Material Needs Identification System to Prevent Youth Violence Involvement

The state of Michigan requires all public schools to report expulsions for all students to the Michigan Department of Education (MDE), including the incident type(s) which led to the expulsion. Expulsions are instances in which the local educational agency removes a student from their regular school for disciplinary purposes for the remainder of the school year or longer. The investigators will consider expulsions for peer aggression as expulsions which included any of the following: 1) firearm possession-handgun; 2) firearm possession-rifle/shotgun; 3) firearm possession-other firearm; 4) other weapon possession; 5) bomb or similar threat; 6) arson; 7) physical violence with injury, or; 8) physical violence without injury. For each school, the study team will calculate the total number of peer aggression expulsions per school year.

The Michigan Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System (MiSACWIS) includes dates of investigations into child maltreatment, names of alleged victims, and date of birth of alleged victims for all child maltreatment investigations in the state of Michigan. Investigators will link the MiSACWIS data to individual student data from MDE that includes information on student name, date of birth, schools of enrollment, and dates of school enrollment enrolled schools. The study team will use this linked dataset to calculate the number of child maltreatment investigations per school per school year.

A student is considered chronically absent if they miss 10% or more of school days in which they are enrolled at the school. For each school, the investigators will calculate the total number of students that were chronically absent via the data provided by MDE.

In the state of Michigan, firearm possession on school grounds by a student requires the student to be expelled from the school. Expulsions for firearm possession on school grounds can be recorded as one or more of the following incident types: 1) firearm possession-handgun; 2) firearm possession-rifle/shotgun; 3) firearm possession-other firearm. The study team will consider any expulsions that included one of these types as a reason for expulsion as a firearm-involved expulsion. For each school, the study team will calculate the total number of firearm-involved expulsions per school year.