Public High Schools - Sports Injury Recordkeeping and Reporting - Requirements
HB1097 requires every public high school in Maryland to keep a standardized injury log for injuries that occur during school athletic activities. The log must capture basic details such as the date and time of the injury, the sport or activity involved, a general description of the injury and affected body part, whether it happened during practice, competition, or conditioning, whether the student was removed from play, whether medical evaluation or treatment was provided or recommended, who documented the injury, and, if applicable, the student’s return-to-activity date.
The bill also requires injuries to be documented within 24 hours by a coach, certified athletic trainer, school nurse, or other designated school staff. Schools must retain these logs for at least five years and make them available to local school systems and the Department of Education for compliance and safety review. Beginning July 1, 2027, each local school system must submit an annual aggregated report of high school athletic injuries to the State Department of Education, without any student-identifying information. The Department, working with the Department of Health, athletic trainers, and the public secondary schools athletic association, may adopt regulations and standardized forms to implement the law.
This bill adds a new section to the Education Article, creating a statewide recordkeeping and reporting mandate for public high school sports injuries. It affects public high schools, local school systems, the State Department of Education, and school personnel responsible for documenting injuries, while also requiring compliance with state and federal privacy laws such as FERPA. The measure is intended to improve injury tracking, safety oversight, and data collection for school athletics, and it authorizes agencies to develop regulations and standardized reporting forms.
The available voting history suggests the bill was generally well received, passing third reading in the House by a wide margin of 113 yeas to 18 nays. The committee report was favorable with amendments, indicating support for the bill’s overall purpose while allowing for some refinement. No committee transcript is available, so the record does not show detailed debate, but the strong floor vote points to broad agreement on the need for better sports injury tracking in public high schools.
The main areas of potential contention are administrative burden, privacy, and implementation details. Schools and local systems may need to add or formalize procedures for timely injury documentation, retention, and annual reporting, which could raise workload concerns. The bill addresses privacy by prohibiting student-identifying information in the annual report and requiring compliance with FERPA and other privacy laws, but data handling remains a likely point of scrutiny. Any disagreement would likely center on how detailed the logs should be, who should be responsible for completing them, and how regulations should balance safety oversight with school operational capacity.