Georgia HB 268: what the law required, and what a tip app still does not do

Georgia HB 268 (Act 17 of 2025) put an anonymous reporting program into statute as O.C.G.A. § 20-2-779.1. The July 1, 2026 date to develop and operate — or contract for — that program has already passed. This is not a countdown post. It is a map of what the subsection actually asked for, and why buying “an app students can tap” is not the same work.

Districts should confirm every requirement with counsel. The enrolled bill and the Governor’s materials are public: legislation tracker, enrolled text, signing release.

The program is bigger than a form

At minimum, the anonymous reporting program in § 20-2-779.1(f) must be accessible to any person; operate 24/7 through at least a mobile application and a multilingual crisis center staffed by people with evidence-based counseling and crisis-intervention training; promptly forward reports to the appropriate school-based team; support coordinated response with schools, local 911 centers, and law enforcement; require and certify training of school-based teams and 911 personnel; and run a public awareness campaign before launch.

A vendor who only delivers a QR code has not delivered the program. A vendor who claims their software is the staffed multilingual crisis center is overselling. NOW IMS does not staff that center. The statute wants trained humans. That staffing is a district arrangement or a partner service (including, where districts use it, a nonprofit crisis center). NOW IMS is the reporting, routing, case-management, and evidence layer: how a report gets in, how it reaches the school-based team, and the record of what happened next.

Grandfathering is not a forever waiver

Districts with a substantially compliant program as of July 1, 2025 are described as grandfathered from re-procurement, and existing vendor contracts are not impaired — but a contract for a non-compliant program cannot be renewed past its current expiration. If the current channel cannot meet the subsection (f) minimums, the live questions are gap-closure speed and the next renewal, not a new logo on a poster.

Two other HB 268 tracks people mix up

Alyssa’s Alert / panic. The mobile panic alert system in O.C.G.A. § 20-2-591 (real-time coordination with law enforcement, NG911, school mapping) is a separate procurement. NOW IMS does not provide it. Do not evaluate incident management and panic hardware as one demo.

Behavioral threat assessment. HB 268 also requires every public school safety plan to include a behavioral threat assessment and management plan, submitted to DBHDD, by January 1, 2027. Workflow, named owners, deadlines, determinations, and an append-only history are the kind of evidence a plan on paper cannot supply by itself. That is casework, not a tip toast.

What NOW IMS is not

Not 911. Not panic alert or school mapping. Not a staffed crisis center. Not automatic legal compliance. Standard plans do not include 24/7 human monitoring. Your board, superintendent, counsel, school-based teams, and public-safety partners remain responsible for staffing, training, certifications, the awareness campaign, and the compliance determination.

If you are closing the gap

Read the longer statute-by-statute page: Georgia HB 268 anonymous reporting. Then book a walkthrough with the contract you already have in hand. We will separate the crisis-center obligation, the panic-alert obligation, and the system of record your teams will actually run.