Georgia · HB 268 · O.C.G.A. § 20-2-779.1
Since July 1, 2026, every Georgia district must operate an anonymous reporting program that meets the statute’s minimums — and contracts for non-compliant programs cannot be renewed. If your program has gaps, now is when they get expensive.
Requirement sources reviewed August 19, 2026 · Operational information, not legal advice
01 / What the statute requires
These are the requirements from the enrolled Act — the anchors we would map against your current program with your district team and counsel.
The program must let any person — not just students — anonymously report dangerous, violent, threatening, or harmful activity on school property or relating to a student or school personnel. It must operate 24/7 through at minimum a mobile application and a multilingual crisis center staffed by individuals trained in evidence-based counseling and crisis intervention.
Read the enrolled ActReports must promptly forward to the appropriate school-based team, and the program must support a coordinated crisis response by schools, local 911 centers, and law enforcement. It must also require and certify training of school-based teams in each school and of local 911 personnel who receive report notices — a duty many programs have not evidenced.
Read § 20-2-779.1(f)Districts must promote public awareness of the program and its reporting methods before launch. Programs substantially compliant as of July 1, 2025 are grandfathered from re-procurement — but a vendor contract for a non-compliant program cannot be renewed past its current expiration. Renewal dates are compliance deadlines now.
Track HB 268The same Act requires a mobile panic alert system integrated with Next Generation 911 (§ 20-2-591) and school mapping data (§ 38-3-154) — separate procurements NOW IMS does not provide — plus a DBHDD-approved behavioral threat assessment plan in every school safety plan by January 1, 2027 and three-business-day student records transfers, where our workflows help directly.
Important: This page summarizes an enacted Georgia statute for planning purposes and is not legal advice. Confirm applicability, grandfathering, and implementation with your district’s counsel, GEMA/HS, and your local public safety partners.
02 / Requirement-to-workflow map
Protected web, SMS, and voice channels for students, families, staff, and the community, with two-way anonymous follow-up. IP addresses, caller numbers, and device fingerprints are never stored in case records on anonymous channels.
Every report dispatches immediately to the right team for that school, with acknowledgement tracked against deadlines and automatic escalation when no one responds — the "promptly forward" requirement as an operational record, not a policy sentence.
Location-scoped threat assessment teams, guided playbooks with named owners and working-day deadlines, documented determinations, and an append-only audit trail — aligned with the behavioral threat assessment plan due January 1, 2027.
When a renewal review, GEMA inquiry, or board question comes, the answer is a record: who was notified, when they acknowledged, what was decided, and why. Role- and school-scoped access keeps sensitive cases contained.
03 / Clear boundaries
HB 268 spans several systems. NOW IMS is the anonymous reporting, response, and case-governance layer. Districts should know exactly where our scope ends before committing budget:
04 / Questions
O.C.G.A. § 20-2-779.1(f), enacted by HB 268 (Act 17 of 2025), required each local board of education or public school governing body — by July 1, 2026 — to develop and operate, or contract with a provider for, an anonymous reporting program. At minimum it must be accessible to any person; operate 24/7 through at least a mobile application and a multilingual crisis center staffed by individuals with evidence-based counseling and crisis intervention training; promptly forward reports to the appropriate school-based team; support coordinated response by 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. Districts should confirm requirements with counsel.
The requirement is in force now. Districts with a substantially compliant program operating as of July 1, 2025 are 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 your program does not meet the subsection (f) minimums, the practical questions are how fast you can close the gap and what happens at your next renewal.
No — and any software vendor who says otherwise is overselling. The statute requires the program to include a crisis center staffed by trained people; that staffing comes from your district’s own arrangements or a partner service. NOW IMS is the reporting, routing, case-management, and evidence layer: the channels reports come in through, the system that gets them to the right school-based team immediately, and the record that shows what happened next.
No. The panic alert system in O.C.G.A. § 20-2-591 — real-time coordination with law enforcement, integration with Next Generation 911 and school mapping data — is a separate procurement from the anonymous reporting program, and NOW IMS does not provide it. We stay in our lane: anonymous reporting, incident response, and case governance.
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. NOW IMS supports threat assessment team workflows directly: location-scoped teams, guided playbooks with deadlines and named owners, documented determinations, and an append-only audit trail — useful evidence for the plan you file and the process you actually run.
No software makes an organization compliant by itself. NOW IMS can support intake, routing, coordination records, response tracking, and governance evidence. Your board, superintendent, counsel, school-based teams, and local public safety partners remain responsible for staffing, training, certifications, the awareness campaign, and the compliance determination itself.
05 / Private working session
Bring what you run today — vendor, channels, teams, renewal dates. We’ll walk § 20-2-779.1(f)’s minimums against it and be straight about which gaps are software, which are staffing, and which are paperwork.