Todd Novak: Keeping kids safe at school: Funding the Office of School Safety

The column below reflects the views of the author, and these opinions are neither endorsed nor supported by WisOpinion.com.

Since the last legislative session, one of my top priorities has been ensuring that the Office of School Safety (OSS) at the Wisconsin Department of Justice retains a permanent increase in its staffing levels.

While we hope that a violent incident or other tragedy never occurs, it’s essential that we provide our schools every possible resource, not only prevent these tragedies, but also equip our schools with the tools they need to respond and recover if one does occur.

In 2018, I authored legislation that created the Office of School Safety in response to the tragic Parkland, Florida school shooting. Since then, OSS has served as a critical resource for students, teachers, and parents, helping ensure safety in our schools. The original bill included $100 million in state grants to upgrade school security infrastructure, and create critical incident mapping plans for emergencies. The bill also created a 24/7 anonymous tip line, “Speak Up Speak Out” (SUSO), to report threats of bullying, violence, or other safety concerns.

In 2021, the passage of the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) enabled OSS to access federal grant funding to expand its staffing. The expansion improved tip line operations and support for our schools. Since then, SUSO has received more than 17,000 tips, covering issues from bullying, domestic abuse, self-harm, sexual misconduct, threats of violence, and mental health concerns. With increased funding, OSS has been able to better support Wisconsin schools in planning for and responding to critical incidents.

In 2023, after conversations with Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul, I learned that OSS expansion funding would expire at the end of 2024 due to the sunset of ARPA funding. In response, I worked with AG Kaul and Senator Romaine Quinn (R-Birchwood) to draft legislation that temporarily continued funding the program using revenue from concealed carry permit fees.

Last March, Governor Evers signed our bill into law during one of his final bill signings of the session, extending funding through September of 2025. The goal was to provide time for me to work on long term funding solutions with my Republican colleagues in the Legislature as well as Governor Evers during this year’s budget process.

Since then, we have worked tirelessly to advocate for a long-term funding increase to allow OSS to continue operating at full capacity. Last week, our advocacy paid off as Governor Evers signed the 2025-27 state budget into law, which included a provision I authored to increase in state funding for 13 positions at OSS, securing staffing levels originally funded through ARPA.

I consider this one of my signature legislative achievements. The partisan and fiscal challenges to secure long-term funding for OSS was daunting, but I always believed that commonsense would prevail. The signing of the budget and the allocation of permanent staff funding for OSS marks the culmination of our efforts. I’m proud of this work and even prouder to say that, thanks to our bipartisan collaboration, Wisconsin is taking real action to keep our kids safe at school.

– Novak, R-Dodgeville, represents the 51st Assembly District.