Utah school safety leaders shared details of the mental health screening volunteers will have to pass in order to be armed guardians. The cost of screening those individuals will be up to the schools to cover.
The state’s School Safety Center and State Security Chief Matt Pennington held a virtual town hall meeting on Sept. 11. It gave school employees and law enforcement officers an update on where things stand after lawmakers passed a massive school safety law earlier this year. A majority of the questions, though, were about the new guardian program.
The law requires each public school to either have a school resource officer, an armed private security guard or a guardian. A guardian is an existing school employee who volunteers to carry a gun and is trained to use it if necessary.
Lt. Jeremy Barnes, school safety liaison for the Utah Department of Public Safety, said some school administrators are not comfortable with the individuals who have volunteered to be their guardians. He clarified that the school administrator has to approve the guardian if the school chooses that option.
New guardians will also have to pass a “fit to carry assessment.” The law tasked the state’s Office of Substance Use and Mental Health to create the screening.
Scott Eyre, a school-based mental health specialist with the Department of Health and Human Services, said the recommendation will be codified and “was made by looking at what other states are doing and by consulting with leading experts in our state.”
The screening has to be administered by someone who has a doctorate and formal training in clinical assessments. It will include a personality assessment, a symptoms screener, an in-person interview and a personal reference. Eyre said the standards are high to “ensure that the right folks are selected for the additional responsibilities that are required of them.”
That means, Eyre said, it's unlikely school districts will have a school psychologist that can do the job and will have to hire someone for the role. In an email to KUER, Eyre clarified that the cost of the assessment could be between $350 to $600. However, he added some professionals were open to offering lower prices to support the guardian program.
Right now, lawmakers haven’t allocated any funding specifically for these screenings.
“We’d love to see that change,” Eyre said.
Schools can apply for funding that was approved along with the law. Still, local school board members have expressed concerns about being able to pay for everything that is required.
School guardians will get a one-time stipend of $500 that can be used to pay for things like a holster or ammunition.
The Office of Substance Use and Mental Health has also recommended that once the program gets started, existing guardians be required to undergo an annual mental health screening.
Barnes said the state has finished writing the guardian training program that will be rolled out in the coming months. It’s 28 hours and will be administered by county security chiefs across the state. Some schools, Barnes said, have already decided they will have a school guardian and selected that person.
The only people who will know the identity of a school’s guardian are the state security chief, the county security chief, that school’s administration, local law enforcement and other school safety personnel.
There isn’t a hard deadline for when schools have to have that armed person in place as specific timelines will depend on the results of the safety needs assessments that schools have to turn in by the end of 2024. But Eyre added schools should have those people in place by the 2025-2026 school year or sooner.
“Safety shouldn’t be put off. If we can move quickly on this, please do.”
