Armed Guards Coming to Utah Schools

According to KSL.com, armed guards will be put in every Utah school soon.

A new law requires ever school to have an armed "guardian."

From KSL: (link to full article)

“Think of them kind of like an air marshal when you board an airplane,” said Matt Pennington.

Pennington is the state’s new security chief assigned to carry out the sweeping new school safety law.

Guardians will respond with lethal force in the event of a school threat.

“If you attack a school here in Utah, you’re going to be confronted,” said Pennington. “it’s not a soft target anymore.”

This is awesome and I'm glad Utah is on the forefront of this.

It is going to take a lot of money.

Some districts are saying they'll have to pay teachers less to pay for a guardian. Others are saying they already have all the guardians in place to comply with the law.

"Granite, Cache, Ogden and Weber suggest school resource officers might help in this role. Even if there were enough officers to cover the schools, it could cost districts hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

Provo said they might have to augment pay of existing employees, at an estimated cost of $200,000 a year."

Washington County already has the guardians in place.

It seems to me that each district is still trying to figure out the financing, not just for the guardian but for the guns and ammunition, training etc...

I think the idea of guardians will spread once more places put it into play.