Private security guards running weapon detectors will scrutinize Salt Lake City teenagers as they return to classes this fall, a security “hardening” that divided school board members approved Tuesday in a split vote.
Salt Lake City School District and the four high schools with detectors have been working on protocols for telling families about the new level of surveillance, for explaining to students how the system will work, and for limiting interactions between the contracted guards and students, said Superintendent Elizabeth Grant.
A community open house about the guards and detectors will be held but the date has not yet been set, district spokespeople said. The guards have yet to be hired, district business administrator Alan Kearsley said, as the firm that will provide them was waiting for the board’s Tuesday vote to approve the $1.1 million expense.
Because of that, the district is still debating whether to leave the already installed weapons detectors in place for an “extended soft roll out” as the school year begins or take them down until is staffing is available, district spokesperson Yándary Chatwin said.
The district’s plan to install weapon detectors at West, East and Highland high schools dates back to December, when Kearsley briefed board members. He said in January that the district had approved the three principals’ requests for a second safety coordinator at each campus to help staff the detectors.
Ashley Anderson, who joined the school board in January, said members have since been told that the plan to use district employees is “untenable.”
Instead, the board on Tuesday debated — and agreed on a 5-2 vote — to approve the $1.1 million purchase order for PalAmerican Security Inc. to staff the detectors, including an added system at Horizonte Instruction and Training Center. Anderson and board member Mohamed Baayd voted against the order.
Before the board’s vote, Superintendent Elizabeth Grant said she supported the new security measures.
“As superintendent, I want to use every tool available to keep our staff and our schools safe,” Grant said, adding that the weapon detectors are a part of an overall safety and security strategy for the district. “We live in rather unthinkable times, so I just wanted to express my support to get these up and running.”
In January, current board members approved a $1.44 million expenditure to lease weapon detectors for West, East and Highland High Schools from Stone Security LLC for four years. On Aug. 1, the board approved an additional purchase order for $123,113 for Horizonte.
Granite School District leased the same Evolv brand machines from Stone Security for Hunter High School last school year and hired PalAmerican to staff them. Screenings occurred during the last two months of classes, Granite spokesperson Ben Horsely said, though the district had originally signed off on half of the school year. The pilot will resume this year.
Part of the delay “was us getting in place appropriate protocols and policies,” Horsely said. Also, PalAmerican “did struggle to staff all six positions consistently,” said Granite district police chief Randy Porter at a July board meeting.
If the district were to fully adopt the detectors, Horsely said, it would staff them with Granite employees. “When you’re doing a pilot, you don’t hire full-time employees to do what might be a temporary job,” he said.
‘A million more dollars into an unproven model’
In opposing the plan to hire security guards, Anderson said that research shows “this type of hardening” provides “virtually zero protection against school-based violence.”
She added: “What I’m even more worried about is the body of public health and police de-escalation research that shows unsworn officers — like those in the contract with PalAmerica[n] — risk the escalation of violence, specifically for people of color.”
According to a 2021 report from the Department of Education, Homeland Security, Justice and Health & Human Services, “The impact of metal detectors, X-ray machines, and similar screening technologies on school violence is questionable, with at least one study concluding that metal detectors have no apparent effect on reducing violence on school grounds.” It pointed to a 2016 RAND Corp. report that reached that conclusion, based on 15 years of research.
“We’re being asked to put a million more dollars into an unproven model,” Anderson said.
Students “are already under so much stress,” Baayd added, and weapon detectors could make it worse, especially for marginalized students.
“I’m thinking about the minority kids who came from the refugee world, from places of war,” Baayd said. If they walk through a detector and it “beeps,” he said, “it’s a nightmare.”
And so for the first six months, Baayd said he’d like to see monthly updates on how many students were stopped, why they were stopped and the gender and race of the students, because “there is going to be human error involved in this as well.”
Board President Nate Salazar said he could see both sides, “especially as a person of color, as a man of color, in my own anxieties navigating the world, similar to my colleague board member Baayd.”
Vice President Bryce Williams noted that during earlier board discussions, “We had parents pleading with us to have these detectors, to have ... staffing for such security measures as well.”
Those supporters included parents “from a variety of different backgrounds and lived experiences,” he said. “I would like to err on the side of caution and ... give these detectors a shot and the staffing for it a shot for a while.”
Board member Bryan Jensen agreed with that approach; board members Kristi Swett and Jenny Sika voted in favor of the order without discussing their reasoning.
‘They want to put these into place’
Each high school principal “confirmed that they are in support of having these in their schools,” Grant said, “that as they have been talking to their communities, that they want to put these into place.”
The proposal to install the detectors originated with the principals, Kearsley had told school board members in a December briefing. Although principals at other district high schools and middle schools also were interested, Kearsley suggested starting with West, East and Highland for budget reasons.
In addition to the $1.4 million for the 4-year lease of the detectors, he said, the plan would cost about $194,000 for the three additional security coordinators.
Except for Anderson and Jensen, who joined the board in January, the other five current members were on the board. However, the only board member who raised a question about the idea of putting weapon detectors in schools was the student representative, Lydia May, then a senior at West High.
“I’ve heard from some students who are very supportive of weapon detectors and I’ve heard from some students who are very much unsupportive,” May said.
“The people who are unsupportive are worried about like, potential bias or like, how this could increase profiling in schools,” she said, “and so my question is, what kind of anti-bias training are security coordinators receiving?”
Kearsley responded: “The weapons detectors actually take bias out of it because you’re not profiling a specific kid; it’s like the weapons detectors detect something on a kid, then that kid gets brought in a little search room and they have a discussion of, ‘Hey, the weapon detector said this, let’s see what you got in your backpack.’ The weapon detector has zero bias; it’s just looking for metal.”
District staff then added that anti-bias training was being developed for the coordinators.
The board’s current student representative, Jaziayah Evans, said Tuesday that she supported moving forward with the district’s plan, “but revisiting it later would be important.”
Currently, a student who is found with a weapon could face a suspension or expulsion along with being referred to the district for a “safe school hearing,” according to district policy.
In the future, Anderson said, the board should approve a plan that includes a communication strategy.
“There’s been this idea, we approve this so that a plan can be made,” she said, “and now we’re at a point where plans have not been rolled out and back to school nights and orientations have occurred, and people don’t know what’s happening.”
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