Washington school emergency plan law

Does Washington require school emergency plans?

Yes. RCW 28A.320.125 requires each school district to adopt and carry out a safe school plan. The statute refers to schools and districts developing their own individual comprehensive safe school plans, and requires them to consider state and regional school safety center guidance when they do. The legislature's stated aim is for public schools and staff to have current safe school plans in place, and it intends the plans to make districts eligible for federal assistance. OSPI (the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction) guidance says the law requires all districts and schools to have current comprehensive safe school plans, which OSPI calls Emergency Operation Plans.

What must the plan contain?

School principals and administrators are responsible for assessing the threats and hazards most likely to affect their school. A district's plan for students in emotional or behavioral distress may be part of the comprehensive safe school plan.

How often is the plan reviewed?

To the extent funds are available, districts must review and update safe school plans every year in collaboration with local emergency response agencies. Under the same funding condition, districts must each year inventory all hazardous materials and give all staff information on emergency supplies and on notification and alert procedures. Each yearly update must identify all staff trained on NIMS or ICS (the national incident management and incident command systems), or certified on ICS, and must identify school transportation procedures for evacuation. OSPI guidance says the plan should be developed with emergency responders and community partners and regularly reviewed.

Is the plan submitted to anyone?

The yearly duties require districts to review and update plans with local emergency response agencies, but RCW 28A.320.125 sets no duty to file or submit the plan to OSPI, police, fire or emergency management. OSPI must work with stakeholders to set data collection and submission requirements for districts about their safe school plans.

How do schools work with police and fire?

Districts must work with local law enforcement, 911 answering points, and safety and security staff to develop an emergency response system. A qualifying emergency response system can include systems developed as part of a safe school plan. Each district had to send OSPI an emergency response system progress report by October 1, 2025. Districts are encouraged, not required, to run one tabletop, one functional and two full-scale exercises with emergency responders within four years. Each district had to adopt a school-based threat assessment program policy and procedure by the start of the 2020-21 school year. The state school safety center must support districts in developing and carrying out comprehensive safe school plans.

Is the plan confidential?

Information districts or schools compile while developing their safe school plans is exempt from public records disclosure only to the extent it identifies specific vulnerabilities of the district and each school. That exemption sits among the security exemptions of the Public Records Act.

Are there compliance checks?

A five-year monitoring duty, meant to check districts against RCW 28A.320.125, applies only if the legislature appropriates money for it. That monitoring section sets no penalty or funding sanction for a district out of compliance; it provides monitoring, data collection, a 2020 report and rulemaking authority. OSPI may, but is not required to, adopt rules carrying out the safe school plan section.

Who is covered?

The plan duty is placed on each school district. Charter schools must follow state health and safety laws that apply to school districts, to the same extent as districts. The emergency response system section applies to charter schools and state-tribal education compact schools. Compact schools are exempt from state statutes that apply to districts unless their chapter or compact applies them, and the list of statutes they must follow does not include the safe school plan law. Within RCW 28A.320.125, private schools are expressly included only for the first responder notice rule in subsection (8). Approved private schools must meet reasonable health and fire safety requirements; no safe school plan duty is stated there.

What changed recently?

The most recent amendment to RCW 28A.320.125 is 2024 c 21 s 1; no 2025 or 2026 amendment has been enacted. The emergency response system section, RCW 28A.320.126, was last amended by chapter 347, Laws of 2025 (ESSB 5004). The statewide first responder building mapping statute was repealed in 2021. HB 2328 (2026) would require school maps with accurate, verified floor plans, and would make school mapping data exempt from public disclosure. HB 2328 never left the House Education Committee; its last official action was first reading and referral on January 12, 2026. SB 6042, the Senate companion on school maps, never left the Senate Early Learning & K-12 Education Committee; its last official action was a public hearing on January 21, 2026. SB 6285 (2026) would change the monthly drill duty in RCW 28A.320.125 from "shall" to "are encouraged to"; it never left the Senate Early Learning & K-12 Education Committee, with its last official action on January 22, 2026.