Utah students bring weapons to class or campus hundreds of times in a school year.
But there’s no statewide policy for when or what to tell the parents of other kids who attend — which means you may hear about a knife or gun on school grounds from your child, or another parent, or not at all.
Here’s what state education officials do, and how one large district decides what to share with a school community.
Tracking the numbers
The Utah State Board of Education collects reports of weapons infractions in an annual report of behavioral “incidents” at schools statewide.
Over the 2020-21 school year, there were 617 reports of Utah students bringing a weapon to school. Overall, the number of incidents in that year’s report were lower than previous years, the state office noted, likely because fewer students were at schools due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Numbers from the 2021-22 school year are still being compiled. But the most common weapon in infractions from the 2020 school year was a knife or sharp object, which was found in 217 of the 617 cases.
Beyond what’s submitted to the state board for the annual report, local school districts determine any further tracking, consequences and notifications associated with these infractions, said Sgt. Jeremy Barnes, the Utah Department of Public Safety’s school safety liaison, in an email.
A student’s history with weapon infractions, for example, would be tracked in the student record at the local level. School districts determine whether parents can track the overall history of weapon infractions at specific schools.
Consequences could include a law enforcement investigation and criminal charges in addition to “whatever discipline the district determines appropriate,” Barnes said. The parents of students involved would be aware of the violation and discipline “in most cases,” he said.
“The local school districts or [local educational agencies] are given a lot of autonomy on how to address matters and develop practices within their areas,” Barnes said.
When do Granite schools notify parents?
Granite School District, the state’s third-largest school system, typically reports an infraction every few years for its elementary and junior high schools, said Granite spokesperson Ben Horsley. Its high school students bring weapons to campus slightly more often, he said.
The district has seen more weapon infractions in recent years, Horsley said, but the “overwhelming majority” of those involve facsimile weapons, like BB guns.
“We still see a lot of kids bringing pocket knives or weapons onto campus that weren’t intended for harm, and just really small types of weapons that really weren’t intended to be used as a weapon,” Horsley said. ”It’s still obviously disconcerting, because we have had and seen actual weapons of violence on campus.”
Who gets notified of weapon infractions at a Granite school depends on the situation, Horsley said.
If a student accidentally brought a pocket knife to school, it would result in an infraction, he said. But if no one saw the knife except the student and a teacher, it would be removed and given back to the parents at the end of the school day — with a request that it didn’t return to campus.
But if the student showed off that pocket knife to students at recess, it would be considered a “disruption” to the school and all parents would be notified.
“In the overwhelming majority [of cases] we are notifying; very rarely are we not notifying,” Horsley said.
“Overwhelmingly, we find that most of the reports that we receive about weapons on campus come from kids, not from [on-campus] cameras,” he continued. “The biggest reminder we try to emphasize with parents is talk to your kids — make sure they know that they have an obligation to help keep their school safe. And if they see something they need to report it; they can do so anonymously through SafeUT,” an app kids can download to their phones.
When it comes to notifying parents, he added, “we actually notify more about rumors about weapons on campus than we do about actual weapons on campus. Because you can imagine, with social media and kids making threats either in jest or whatnot, that we see a lot more of those types of situations occurring than actual weapons violations.”
What are the consequences in Granite schools?
The majority of students accused of weapon infractions at Granite schools are referred to a safe school committee at the district level, which evaluates whether they violated “safe school” standards set out by Granite’s policies.
These referrals are also made for allegations of significant bullying, harassment or other acts of active violence.
Incidents where there is no “actual threat” or safety concern — like a student accidentally bringing a pocket knife to school — are not referred, Horsley said. Situations like these are rare but have occurred with younger students.
Horsley said if the district determines the student involved violated “safe school” standards, they are typically placed in a Granite Alternative Placement Program, which is a different school location with smaller class sizes, more supervision and more regimented programming. Law enforcement officers are present in these learning environments.
“People say, ‘Why don’t you just expel students?’ We don’t expel students — we provide you your education and an alternative environment where that’s more controlled,” Horsley said.
Some of these students are able to return to their home school.
“Those are all unique and individual circumstances, because we look at each of those case-by-case,” Horsley said. The district committee is “a parole board of some sort — [it] reviews to make sure that you’ve learned your lesson, that you’re remediated properly, and that it’s okay for you to go back to a traditional environment.”
Any safe school referral relating to a weapon infraction is permanently placed on a Granite student’s academic record. This is done so that other school districts can keep track of students’ behavioral records, since the parents of children who are referred for safe school programming often will attempt to transfer them from Granite to another district, Horsley said.
