Utah’s massive new school safety law took effect in May. Stephanie Jerome, who sends her 4-year-old son to the preschool at Weber High School in Pleasant View, wondered what the new law would mean for him — especially the requirement that schools have an armed officer, guard or volunteer guardian on campus.
“It's not just elementaries, junior high and high school students,” she said. “It's also babies that will be impacted by this.”
There are 16,415 children who attend preschools within public or charter schools in the state as of October 2023. Alpine, Granite, Jordan and Davis School Districts have the most preschool students.
While the law doesn’t cover preschools in general, Utah State Security Chief Matt Pennington said that “if they're on campus, then they would just have the same security measures as the campus is required to have.”
Little will change for Jerome’s son at Weber High. The school already has an armed school resource officer contracted through the Pleasant View Police Department, said Lane Findlay, community relations specialist for Weber School District. That meets the law’s requirement, and the district will work on a backup plan for when the officer is out of the building, he said.
Nine elementary schools in the Weber district have preschools “with some daycare capacity,” Findlay noted. Those schools do not have officers, so to comply with the law, they will need to hire one or a security guard or find a school guardian.
The guardian would be an existing staff member whose primary focus is not classroom teaching (with exceptions for small schools).
“There's this misinformation out there that we're hiring these people for $500,” said Pennington. “That's not true. That's the stipend to give these people, who are already willing to participate voluntarily, some resources, equipment, whatever they want to use that for.”
The guardian is required to complete a mental health screening, acquire a concealed carry permit and undergo training twice a year. The sheriff or local law enforcement will handle that training.
As it stands now, Pennington said that having guns in schools isn’t new.
“Teachers and school people, employees, have been able to carry guns for 20 years with Utah's concealed firearms laws,” he said. Since Jerome’s son attends preschool in a high school building, “there is probably a high likelihood that there's already [a gun] on that campus.”
Jerome feels better knowing that the officer at Weber High will fulfill the requirement. “If it's a resource officer who has gone through training and knows how to handle a weapon, then that's OK with me,” she said.
She worries, however, about having guardians in schools with children as young as daycare.
“Children will be exposed to this, and they may or may not even know what a gun is, and they might try to approach that person and take the gun from them,” she said. “Is the person trained enough to know how to prevent a gun from getting into the hands of a child?”
As for the youngest children in schools, Pennington isn’t concerned, as “they would have the same security measures as the school would,” he said.
The law requires a staff member to wear a panic alert device in each classroom and outlines that the state security chief must develop the school resource officer training, among other changes.
Districts must submit a school safety needs assessment by Dec. 31. The Utah Department of Public Safety and the School Safety Center, which is part of the State Board of Education, will respond with recommendations.
“Ultimately, they still have the decision, the choice, to do whatever they want to do as the education agency,” Pennington said. There’s no deadline for when schools must have an armed individual on campus.
Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern Utah.
