Nevada school tip line law

Does Nevada require a school tip line?

Yes. Nevada law requires the Director of the Office for a Safe and Respectful Learning Environment to establish the SafeVoice Program. SafeVoice must let any person report dangerous, violent or unlawful activity, or a threat of it, on school property, at public school activities, on public school buses, or by a public school pupil. School district boards and charter school governing bodies must appoint a team of at least three staff members at each public school, including each charter school, to receive notice of SafeVoice reports. The SafeVoice phone number is 1-833-216-SAFE (7233).

Who runs SafeVoice?

The support center includes a hotline, a website, a mobile app and a text-messaging app. Instead of running the support center itself, the Director may contract with a qualified, experienced organization to run it. The statute on who runs the support center names only the Director (or a designee) or an organization the Director contracts with; it does not name the Department of Public Safety. The Department of Education says it runs SafeVoice in partnership with the Nevada Department of Public Safety, and says SafeVoice was established under SB 212 in 2017.

What must every public school do?

The school team includes a counselor, psychologist, social worker or similar person (if the school employs one full-time) and a school administrator. Districts and charter schools must make sure SafeVoice information, including the hotline number, appears on the back of any ID card issued to students and staff. They must also make sure SafeVoice information is posted in conspicuous locations around the school. A team member who gets a SafeVoice notice from the support center must take appropriate action in line with their training. School SafeVoice teams and their members are immune from civil liability for acts or omissions in carrying out their SafeVoice duties.

What does the state provide?

The Director is required to provide training on SafeVoice. That training goes to employees and volunteers of public safety agencies, 911 answering points, school district boards, charter school governing bodies, and other entities the Director picks. The Director must give every public school educational materials about SafeVoice.

How are tips routed and answered?

The support center must be staffed with trained personnel 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, including holidays and days when school is not in session. SafeVoice must have procedures to promptly forward reports to public safety agencies, the Department, other state agencies, school administrators and school employees. The support center must give every SafeVoice report to the appropriate law enforcement agency. Support center staff must be trained to follow up on each report to judge whether it is valid and how severe the threat is. The support center must forward information from reporters who are treated as not anonymous to the team at the relevant public school. SafeVoice must have procedures so the appropriate public safety agencies may access a student's personally identifiable information in order to respond, 24 hours a day. The support center must have a process for handling reports that concern a private school or an entity other than a school.

Are tips anonymous and confidential?

A person who reports to SafeVoice may remain anonymous unless the Department's policies and regulations require their identity to be disclosed. The support center must use hack-resistant software to protect reporters' anonymity. Information SafeVoice receives about reported activity or threats is confidential and must not be disclosed except as authorized. Anyone who receives forwarded SafeVoice information, including a reporter's identity, must keep it confidential. Information reported to SafeVoice is subject to state and federal student-privacy and health-privacy laws, including FERPA (the federal student records privacy law). Except as provided, no one can be compelled to produce or disclose records or information given to SafeVoice. When a court orders SafeVoice records released to a criminal defendant, the reporter's identity must be redacted. Nevada's general public-records law lists the SafeVoice section among the statutes excepted from its open-records rule. Willfully disclosing SafeVoice records or a reporter's identity is punishable as criminal contempt.

What about false reports?

The Department's regulations must allow disclosure of a reporter's identity if the person knowingly reported false information. Under State Board regulation, a person who deliberately reports false information with intent to cause harm loses anonymity. The only criminal penalty in the SafeVoice sections covers disclosure of records or a reporter's identity and defiance of court orders; it sets no penalty for making a false report. Separately, Nevada's general false-report law makes it a misdemeanor to deliberately make a false report of a crime to police, a sheriff, a district attorney or a member of the Department of Public Safety when it causes an investigation. No official source says whether this applies to a SafeVoice tip.

How does SafeVoice connect to bullying complaints?

If a complaint that school staff broke Nevada's safe and respectful learning (bullying) laws is made through SafeVoice and investigated by the school's SafeVoice team, the Office's Director does not have to investigate it. That exception ends if the complaint says the team's earlier investigation of the same matter failed to resolve it or was otherwise deficient; the Director must then investigate.

What data is reported?

The support center must send the Director a quarterly report of the statistics it compiles. On or before July 1 of each year, the Director must send a SafeVoice summary report, through the Director of the Legislative Counsel Bureau, to the Joint Interim Standing Committee on Education.

How is SafeVoice funded?

State law creates a SafeVoice Program Account in the State General Fund, and money in it may be used only to implement and operate the program. The Director may apply for and accept gifts, donations and grants for the account. The 2025 General Appropriations Act (AB 591) appropriates $1,985,600 for FY 2025-26 and $2,021,214 for FY 2026-27 from the State General Fund for the Department of Education's Safe and Respectful Learning budget; it does not say how much goes to SafeVoice. The 2025 Authorized Expenditures Act (SB 501) authorizes $4,356,751 for FY 2025-26 and $1,077,221 for FY 2026-27 from other sources for the same budget; it does not break out SafeVoice.

What changed recently?

The SafeVoice section, NRS 388.1455, was last amended in 2019; the official page shows no 2021, 2023, 2025 or 2026 amendment. NRS 388.14553, the school-team and ID-card duty, was also last amended in 2019. AB 245 (2023) became law, but the SafeVoice change in its introduced version did not survive; the enrolled text has no reference to SafeVoice. For the 2027 session, a bill draft request on school safety (BDR 34-447) was filed on August 18, 2026; its text is not published, and no 2027 request names SafeVoice.