Act 143
On March 26, 2018, the Wisconsin Legislature enacted 2017 Wisconsin Act 143 (“Act 143”). The Act was, in large part, a response to the increasing number of safety threats to schools and a universal desire to ensure that all Wisconsin schools are as safe as possible and fully prepared to respond to and mitigate threats to our schools. While the district always had emergency procedures and safety protocols in place, Act 143 provided the opportunity and impetus for the district to analyze and improve upon those procedures and protocols.
School Safety Plans
Every school in our district has a comprehensive written safety plans. These plans are shared with the Wisconsin Department of Justice’s Office of School Safety, the Board of Education, and Madison Police.
The plans outline strategies preventing incidents from taking place, how we are prepared for them if they do occur, what our response looks like and our steps for recovering from an incident.
Individual school safety plans supplement the district plan and contain confidential information that staff, the district and emergency responders would need in an emergency. Examples include school safety team emergency contact information, a breakdown of staff and students, bus lists, traffic safety plans, any safety hazards in the area, a map of cameras, floor plans, evacuation sites, information about surrounding neighborhoods and so on.
The plans establish a baseline and will serve as guides as we continue to evaluate and update them annually.
We also have a comprehensive public District Safety Plan. Updates to the plan are submitted annually to the Wisconsin Department of Justice’s Office of School Safety.
School Safety Drills
Emergency drills help students practice what they learn. These include nine fire drills, two tornado drills, two school safety incident drills (such as Evacuate, Hold, or Lockout), and a “school violence event” drill (Lockdown). Schools will communicate with you when these drills take place.
Threats of School Violence
Act 143 (Wis. Stat. 175.32, 118.07(5)) requires all employees to:
“report if the person believes in good faith, based on a threat made by an individual seen in the course of professional duties regarding violence in or targeted at a school, that there is a serious and imminent threat to the health or safety of a student or school employee or the public.”
Serious and imminent is: a current and substantial risk to the health or safety of someone that could reasonably be suspected to cause death or serious bodily harm.