Sponsors (22)
Introduced December 17, 2025 by Burgess Owens · Last progress December 17, 2025
The bill improves school emergency preparedness and response through standardized maps, training, data collection, and federal coordination—but does so at added cost, with privacy and local-control tradeoffs and a risk that emphasis on technology could divert resources from behavioral prevention programs.
Students and school staff (teachers and other school personnel) will receive more actionable, evidence-based training and individualized consulting to prevent and respond to school emergencies.
Schools, districts, and first responders will gain interoperable, updatable, secured emergency maps plus validated panic-alarm and auxiliary equipment standards, improving on-site emergency coordination and response times.
Local, state, and federal officials will have access to a National School Safety Data Center and an expanded Clearinghouse with subject-matter experts and annual reporting to Congress, creating better nationwide data, coordination, and oversight to target prevention resources.
Taxpayers, federal agencies, states, and school districts will face increased procurement, hosting, compliance, reporting, and administrative costs to implement maps, master plans, equipment standards, and sweeping Clearinghouse activities.
Students, staff, and site owners will face greater privacy and data-security risks because detailed incident data, emergency maps, and surveys will be collected, stored, and shared—with expanded DHS access—unless strong de-identification and access controls are enforced.
Schools and districts (especially low-income ones) may be pushed to purchase hardware or alarm-focused solutions rather than investing limited funds in behavioral, mental-health, and other prevention programs.
Based on analysis of 6 sections of legislative text.
Expands DHS clearinghouse research, training, and panic‑alarm tech work; sets strict technical, security, storage, and access rules for emergency response maps and requires master‑plan reporting.
Expands the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Clearinghouse on School Safety to add research, public education, testing, technical assistance, and personnel focused on school emergency preparedness and response, including a new program to develop and evaluate panic‑alarm technology. Imposes strict technical, security, ownership, storage, interoperability, verification, and access rules for emergency‑response maps used at school sites when federal funds are used to procure them, requires a federal strategy for procuring such maps for federally owned/leased critical sites, and mandates recurring federal reports assessing statewide "master plans" for school safety and best practices. The bill preserves that the Clearinghouse cannot exercise rulemaking authority.