May 16, 2025

New Reporting Requirement Guidance: Crime Statistics on School Property

Wisconsin 2023 Act 12 created a new annual legal reporting requirement for schools and districts, as outlined in Wis. Stat. §118.124. The purpose of this statute is to collect data on state and local law violations that occur on school property.

This requirement applies to public high schools, including independent charter schools with high school grades, and private schools participating in the Private School Choice Programs with high school grades. Under the law, these schools must report data to the Department of Public Instruction on any crimes occurring on school or district property.

Receiving a notice of a criminal charge or citation from local, county, or state law enforcement would signal you have an incident to report. However, due to confidentiality that applies to juvenile charges, a lack of notice for adult charges and other practical difficulties, schools and districts rarely receive sufficient information about a criminal charge or citation. As a result, the DPI recognizes that the crime data reported will be largely incomplete. To simplify this process, the reporting to the DPI will include total type of incident per school.

The DPI has developed guidance and a webpage to comply with this statute and to help schools and districts comply with this law in good faith. This guidance acknowledges the limitations around access to the necessary legal information and is intended to support you in reporting what is reasonably available.

The DPI will collect this data via an online form that will be shared in April/May each year. This year’s form (covering July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025) will be distributed to district administrators next week (please see the subsection titled, “Reporting Year Cut-Off” in the introduction of the guidance document). If you have not received the email containing the form link by May 26, please contact Casie Sulzle at casie.sulzle@dpi.wi.gov.