How well are Utah schools prepared against active threats?
It varies greatly across the state, said Rep. Ryan Wilcox, R-Ogden. Some schools, he said, are highly prepared.
“And then there are others where we’re dramatically unprepared, just to be very blunt,” he said at a press conference Thursday among five Republican lawmakers who have introduced legislation intended to improve school safety, preparedness and data collection and sharing.
Wilcox said the lawmakers have been working together for several months on different aspects of school safety, including on bills that were heard by the House Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee later in the day.
Rep. Karianne Lisonbee, R-Clearfield, said she has introduced legislation to address the unintended consequences of juvenile justice reforms passed within the past decade.
Past legislation has “tied the hands of campus security officers and created a safe space for juveniles to commit crimes on school grounds. Certainly that was never the intent but that is the result,” she said.
“Right now we are seeing juveniles purposely go to school grounds to commit crimes and commit them in front of a security officer without any consequences. The security officers are disempowered to intervene and to refer that juvenile,” Lisonbee said.
HB304, empowers school resource officers to refer violent or weapons offenses on school grounds directly to juvenile court judges, along with other offenses, she said.
It also requires a reintegration process when a justice-involved student returns to the public school setting.
“This bill also requires courts and law enforcement to communicate with a school when a minor has been justice-involved for a crime that happened on or off school grounds,” Lisonbee said.
The bill would address issues such as the recent incident at Taylorsville High School, during which a 17-year-old boy allegedly fired a gun during a dispute with students in the school parking lot, she said. No injuries resulted from the discharge of the firearm.
The incident led to the lockdown of the high school for more than two hours and the lockout of three nearby elementary schools and a junior high.
“That individual had been justice-involved the previous week and the school had no idea,” Lisonbee said.
Ben Horsley, chief of staff of the Granite School District, said the teen was arrested five days after the incident in the school parking lot. School district officials were unaware of his extensive previous involvement with the juvenile justice system.
The House Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee gave the bill a favorable recommendation and voted to send it to the House for further consideration.
Lisonbee has also introduced HB107, which would waive the fees for any school employee who seeks a concealed carry permit. According to the Utah Department of Public Safety, Utah’s concealed firearm permit allows an individual to carry a firearm fully loaded and concealed. The permit also allows an individual to carry a firearm into public schools.
Guns rights proponents spoke in favor of the bill.
Mitch Vilos, an attorney who specializes in personal injury and weapons law, said his research on a book on self-defense laws revealed that since Utah allowed teachers to carry concealed weapons in classrooms in the late 1990s, he could find no evidence that a co- worker or a student had been injured as a result of that statute.
“That’s a very, very impressive safety record over 25 years. I support this bill. I think that we should do it. More teachers should be able to defend themselves and their students,” he said.
At least one Utah educator has sustained an injury due to an accidental discharge of her concealed firearm in the faculty restroom at a Taylorsville elementary school where she was employed.
But investigators said it was unclear if the teacher was struck in the lower calf by a bullet or shards of a broken toilet shattered by the weapon discharge. No one else was injured during the incident, which occurred on Sept. 11, 2014.
Neca Allgood, of the Gun Violence Prevention Center of Utah, spoke in opposition.
“We are concerned that this bill would increase the number of school employees who bring guns to school and introducing guns to the school environment poses everyday risks,” she said.
Incidents in other states have included a Pennsylvania teacher who left a loaded gun in a school bathroom where children found it 2016. In 2012, some Arkansas high school students stole a gun from a teacher’s purse, she said.
“Insurance companies also see firearms on school grounds as creating heightened liability risk,” Allgood said.
The committee voted 8-2 to send HB107 to the House for further consideration.
HB61, sponsored by Wilcox, would create a state security chief position within the Utah Department of Public Safety.
“The state security chief is modeled after the fire marshal model, meaning that that person will be primarily responsible for ensuring the proper design and training and secure features for what will be incorporated into any new school facility,” he said.
The original version of the bill would have required all secondary schools in the state to have a school resource officer but the latest substitutes of HB61 dropped that language. The lawmakers’ earlier conversations even contemplated school resource officers at all levels of public schools, Wilcox said.
Wilcox said it is not clear how many schools in Utah have school resource officers, but improved data collection under the various bills proposed by the five lawmakers should provide clarity.
Whether schools have their own school resource officers or utilize officers from municipal or special service district agencies, specific training for dealing with school threats and quick response times are critical.
“The quicker the response, the quicker it ends,” Wilcox said.
The bill requires schools to conduct threat assessments and it would establish minimum standards for school safety.
Grants would be available for schools to purchase artificial intelligence software that integrates with a school’s surveillance cameras to identify guns in a camera’s field of view. The grants could be used to hire school resource officers or to purchase supplies such as bleed kits.
Rep. Dan Johnson, R-Logan, wants to add requirements in state law for “developmentally appropriate” training or drills regarding an active threat at school.
“How to teach a 5- or 6-year-old to be safe in that setting is much different than say, how you use language with a senior in high school,” said Johnson, a retired educator and school administrator, and sponsor of HB140.
The bill received a favorable recommendation from the House committee.
