Major security upgrades are happening at schools all over Utah after the legislature passed new safety requirements.
Major security upgrades are going to happen at schools all over the state ever since the passing ofThe amendments put uniform, statewide safety requirements in place to prevent and respond to outside threats of violence, as well as more common threats to students that happen each day, like bullying and abuse.
Some of those requirements include physical upgrades. These upgrades include more armed personnel on campus and panic buttons that teachers can wear around their necks.However, smaller school districts said they’re going to have a very hard time complying with these new requirements, saying they just don’t have enough funding. Educators in rural Utah said there are grants and other state-funded programs that offer funding to smaller school districts, and they’re happy to get any funding they can. They also said the funding doesn’t always reach far enough. For example, Wayne County is sparsely populated. Fewer than 2,600 people live there. That’s just one reason why the county doesn’t generate a lot of money for the Wayne County School District. District Superintendent Randy Shelley said, “Approximately 97 percent of the property in our county is public lands. So, 3 percent is privately owned and out of that 3 percent, about 75 percent of that property is in greenbelt, meaning we don’t generate a lot of tax revenue in our county.” They used to have four schools in the district, but now they only have three since Wayne Middle School shut down.Specific Security Requirements Pose ChallengesWhen asked how they would find the money, Shelley answered, “Good question. We’re not sure, yet, what’s going to happen with that.”“We had ballistic-resistant glass, that was part of the initial design. When we put the job out to bid, it ended up coming in significantly higher than we were expecting,” he said. That kind of glass would have cost $14,000 for just the entryways of the high school — so, they’ll have to figure out how to afford that glass over time.On top of that, the district has to find a way to have an armed person on their three campuses from bell to bell. “We don’t have funding for resource officers in Wayne County. Our sheriff’s department consists of about five individuals in the whole county,” Shelley said. He said there aren’t any private security firms that could provide armed guards, so they don’t have that option. They could train one of their current employees to be a school guardian; however, Shelley has doubts about doing that. “That causes me a little concern. Just being frank. I’m not sure that I want to arm any of our employees. I don’t want to put that responsibility on them, but, I understand the need for safety. I understand the intent behind that,” Shelley said. “To me, the ideal solution would be for the legislature to fund resource officers, and fund them adequately.”Educators said finding money is difficult enough in larger districts. There are 48 schools in the Weber School District, and spokesman Lane Findlay said they had to compete with other districts for the grants they were given. “I think there are some challenges in how we implement everything that’s in that bill," Findlay said. "The fortunate thing is there’s not, necessarily, a lot of hard deadlines.” For now, the only real deadline they have is to assess each school’s security needs by the end of the calendar year. “All of our schools will be doing a safety and security assessment to determine their needs related to the guardian requirements,” Findlay said.Rep. Ryan Wilcox is the House Chair of the School Security Task Force. He said the vast majority of school districts haven’t completed their needs assessment to see what they need to upgrade or to find out how much it’s going to cost. When asked for a response to the claims that the school funding doesn’t reach far enough, Wilcox responded, “Until they get their assessments in, we don’t know what we’re looking at. The bottom line is there are several schools that already have these things in place, that are already compliant. There are several that aren’t.” The state set aside over $100 million in grant money for these school security upgrades. However, if a district truly can’t afford things like a school guardian, they can apply for a waiver. “No, we’re not going to ask the lunch lady to go take out a shooter. That’s not how any of this works. Those folks who sign up for that particular guardian will do so on a volunteer basis, and then they have to be qualified by both the district and by law enforcement in the training,” Wilcox said.Back in Wayne County, Shelley said they’re trying to save enough money to build a new elementary school, but that will take some time.___
School Security Funding Challenges Wayne County Randy Shelley Armed Personnel Safety Requirements Security Upgrades
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