Virginia school mapping law

Who has to create school floor plans in Virginia?

As part of each annual school safety audit, the school board shall create a detailed and accurate floor plan for each public school building in the division, or shall certify that each existing floor plan is sufficiently detailed and accurate. Each school board must have every school it supervises conduct a school safety audit every year, working with the locality's chief law-enforcement officer or a designee. Audit items include a school inspection walk-through using a standardized checklist from the Virginia Center for School and Campus Safety. Each school board must also make sure every school it supervises develops a written school crisis, emergency management and medical emergency response plan. The floor-plan duty was added by HB 741, which became Chapter 57 of the 2022 Acts, effective July 1, 2022. The section's history ends with 2025 chapters; no 2026 act has amended it.

Who receives the audit materials?

The completed walk-through checklist must be made available to the locality's chief law-enforcement officer or a designee. The division superintendent must submit all school safety audits to the Virginia Center for School and Campus Safety and make the audit results available to the local chief law-enforcement officer for review and recommendations.

Are school floor plans public records?

The school board keeps authority to withhold or limit the release of security plans, walk-through checklists, floor plans and specific vulnerability assessment parts. Virginia's Freedom of Information Act excludes information about security plans and specific assessment parts of school safety audits from mandatory disclosure. Information in that exclusion list may still be released at the record keeper's discretion, unless another law forbids it. The act separately excludes engineering, architectural or construction drawings whose release would put safety or security at risk. The results of school safety audits must be made public within 90 days of completion.

Is there a state digital mapping program?

The Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) runs a Digital Mapping Program for Virginia K-12 Schools, which its page says will continue as funding allows. The program page says funding to a school division will not exceed $3,500 times the number of its schools that are mapped. In April 2022, the Governor announced $6.5 million through DCJS for the program, and DCJS began approving applicants on a rolling basis in March 2022. DCJS's sample agreement with divisions says the program is paid from administrative funds in the School Resource Officer Incentive Grant Fund, with about $6.5 million planned over four years, and was written to stay in force until December 31, 2023. Divisions submit the paid invoice to DCJS Procurement for reimbursement, and DCJS tells applying divisions to collaborate with local first responder partners. DCJS reports that 128 of Virginia's 131 public school divisions have taken part. The 2026-2028 budget authorizes DCJS to set up a digital mapping program for public universities and community colleges, in addition to the existing program for local school divisions.

What do the state-funded maps show, and who gets them?

The DCJS-funded maps, called Collaborative Response Graphics, combine accurate floor plans, high-resolution imagery, emergency response pre-planning and a grid overlay in one map. They make floor plans available on cell phones and laptops, and are published as GeoPDF, PDF, JPEG, KMZ/KML, GeoTIFF and MBTILES files. DCJS's program rules say the funded maps must include electrical panel and fire zones. Under the program, divisions contract with a vendor to build the maps, which are distributed to first responders through software applications. Schools that opt into the state K-12 mapping program are required to share the digitized maps with local and state first responders. DCJS training lists making sure 911 call centers can access the maps as a best practice for first responders.