Wisconsin Senate Bill SB836

Wisconsin 2025-2026 Regular Session

• Introduced: 1/15/26
• Refer: 1/15/26
• Failed: 3/23/26

Caption

An Act to amend 118.07 (4) (bm) 1.; to create 115.28 (44) of the statutes; Relating to: school lockdown announcements. (FE)

Summary

SB836 would require the Department of Public Instruction, working with the Office of School Safety in the Department of Justice, to create a prerecorded audio message for announcing a school lockdown. DPI would then have to make that message available at no cost to public, private, and tribal schools. The bill is aimed at standardizing how lockdowns are announced across schools in Wisconsin. The bill also amends the school safety planning statute to require that if an individualized safety plan includes a lockdown, the plan must incorporate the DPI-created audio message. In practice, this ties the new statewide announcement tool into existing school safety plans for each school building and facility regularly occupied by pupils, including related real property covered by the plan.

Impact

SB836 would add a new statutory duty for DPI under chapter 115 and modify existing school safety plan requirements under s. 118.07. It would affect public, private, and tribal schools by giving them access to a standardized lockdown announcement and requiring its use in individualized safety plans when lockdown procedures are included. The bill does not appear to impose a direct cost on schools for obtaining the audio message, since DPI must provide it at no cost.

Sentiment

The available record shows no committee transcript, vote tally, or recorded floor debate, so there is no documented public discussion to gauge support or opposition. The bill was introduced and referred to the Senate Committee on Education, but it ultimately failed to pass pursuant to Senate Joint Resolution 1. Based on the text alone, the measure appears to be a school safety initiative intended to improve consistency in emergency communications.

Contention

No specific points of contention are documented in the provided materials. Potential areas of debate, based on the bill’s structure, could include whether a statewide prerecorded message is preferable to locally tailored lockdown procedures, how the requirement would interact with existing school safety plans, and whether mandating a uniform announcement could create operational or security concerns for some schools. However, no speaker or vote record is available here to attribute those concerns to any person or group.