The Baker Act is a roughly 50-year-old state law that allows courts, law enforcement officers and certain medical workers to order people who could be a harm to themselves or others to be taken to facilities for up to 72 hours.

People taken to facilities involuntarily under the law must receive initial examinations by physicians or clinical psychologists, according to the Florida Department of Children and Families. They also can't be released within the 72-hour period without documented approval from physicians or psychologists.

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission, which was created after the 2018 Parkland high-school massacre, reviewed the Baker Act data Wednesday along with discussing other school-safety issues. The report marked the first schools-specific look at the number of Baker Act incidents statewide.

The data indicated 4,844 individual students were taken from campuses for involuntary psychiatric examinations under the Baker Act during the past school year.

"That means that there were 233 duplicates," said Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, who is chairman of the commission. "But because the data is without personally identifiable information, we don't know if one student was Baker acted 10 times or 233 students were Baker acted twice. But regardless, what it shows is the majority of the (campus) Baker acts are one-time events."

The data also did not take into account school-age children who were subject to the Baker Act outside of school environments.

The University of South Florida College of Behavioral and Community Sciences has a Baker Act Reporting Center, which collects data on Baker Act incidents for the Department of Children and Families.