More than 600 volunteer armed guards, also called school guardians, are now approved to be in Utah schools.
That’s according to the latest update from state officials.
A 2024 safety law required all Utah K-12 schools to have armed security on site. It outlined three ways to comply: contract with a local law enforcement agency to have an officer assigned to the school (called a school resource officer), hire a private security guard or have an existing school employee volunteer to be trained by local law enforcement and carry on campus.
The last option is the cheapest and the most popular, State Security Chief Matt Pennington told KUER in August. But at the time, he couldn’t say how many guardians there were because some counties were in the middle of training.
In an Oct. 13 school security task force meeting, Pennington had a number
“I am happy to say, statewide, there’s about 700 in the system right now, which is a lot. That’s good,” he said.
Pennington later detailed to KUER that the state has just over 600 trained guardians and roughly 100 employees statewide in the “educator-protector program” that lawmakers created in 2024. Enrollees in that program receive annual training on how to defend their classroom from “active threats.”
Most schools that have a guardian, Pennington said, actually have two or three.
In most cases, the guardian can’t be a principal or teacher, meaning it could be a custodian or front office secretary. Only certain law enforcement and school safety personnel are allowed to know the identity of a school’s guardian. The volunteer has to be approved by an administrator, pass a mental health screening and receive at least 28 hours of training covering things like firearm use and de-escalation.
It’s not just the low cost that makes the guardian option attractive, Pennington said. It’s also the easiest to access, especially for certain areas.
“Rural Utah doesn’t have a whole lot of private armed security companies,” he said.
As of August, Pennington told KUER about 300 of the state’s roughly 1,100 public, private and charter schools had chosen to go with a school resource officer. Some had that in place before the law. A handful have private armed security.
The 2024 school safety law requires a long list of additions to armed security, like panic buttons in every classroom, stronger windows and internal classroom door locks.
At the October task force meeting, school leaders said the biggest challenge in implementing the law is the same problem they brought up before it passed: not enough money from the state.
Uintah School District Superintendent Rick Woodford said he surveyed 21 other superintendents. They cited funding and costs as the biggest barriers.
Lawmakers allocated $100 million in 2024 and added another $25 million in 2025, but that doesn’t even come close to the $800 million price tag that Republican Rep. Ryan Wilcox, the bill sponsor, estimated last year.
In Uintah, Woodford said two schools haven’t found any volunteers to be school guardians. The next step, he said, is to pay for private security services. Those people would have to come from the Wasatch Front.
“So it’s really tricky and expensive,” Woodford told the task force.
In the next legislative session, Woodford said schools are looking for another $100 million to implement the law.
