USBE, task force present $100 million school safety request; task force says LEA assessments returned 100% compliance

A $100 million funding request to address school safety needs across Utah was presented to the Public Education Subcommittee by Joe Carey, a Utah State Board of Education member and liaison to the school safety task force.

Carey said the request preceded some final assessment data required by statute and that LEAs had a 12/31/2024 deadline to submit assessments. He reported “100% compliance” from districts and charter LEAs with the assessment deadline and said state staff have aggregated the itemized, school‑level requests. "We received those assessments, and I would like to recognize that all of our district schools and all of our LEAs, we had 100% compliance with that request for those school safety assessments," Carey said.

Representative Wilcox, who co‑chairs the task force with Senator Milner, said the group had moved to purchase wearable panic alert buttons and bleed‑control/first‑aid kits with a separate $50 million set aside, and that those two items were marked in the request as already designated. "The school safety task force had voted to purchase the wearable panic alert buttons as well as the bleed control kits and first aid kits with that $50,000,000," Wilcox said.

Committee members asked for district‑by‑district breakdowns to identify rural districts that lack capacity to meet compliance costs locally. Senator Johnson urged the committee to prioritize minimum standards for districts that cannot fund them locally and requested funding detail by district. Carey and Wilcox said the major rural prioritization steps in prior legislation (Hospital 61 and 84, cited by the task force) had intentionally prioritized rural districts in past appropriations.

Representatives and task force members described planned training tied to bleed‑control kits and other equipment. Wilcox said the task force envisions annual training integrated into staff safety training so that school employees would be taught to use an AED, perform CPR and apply bleed kits. "The idea is just to make everyone literate in how to use an AED, how to do initial CPR, and how to use a bleed kit so that every single staffer in that place can do that and then teach," Wilcox said.

Nut graf: The task force presented a consolidated, itemized estimate of school safety needs tied to statutory minimums in HB 84, reported full LEA participation in the assessment process, and recommended purchases and training; lawmakers asked for district‑level cost breakdowns and flagged the need to avoid unfunded mandates for small rural districts.

Carey said some of the assessment data arrived to the Board late but would be distributed to the committee. Committee members also expressed interest in how funds would support ongoing maintenance and training rather than one‑time equipment purchases. No appropriation vote was taken at the hearing.