EVANSTON — The Uinta County School District No. 1 Board of Trustees voted to move forward with policy CKA, allowing teachers to carry concealed firearms on district property, at the regular meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 13. The vote was unanimous among the eight voting board members, although trustee Kerby Barker left the meeting prior to voting. 

Prior to the vote, extensive discussion was held regarding the policy, with Superintendent Ryan Thomas reading the entire policy aloud and trustees and the public asking questions and making suggestions throughout the reading. 

Questions remain about the budgetary implications of the policy and how the district’s liability insurance would be impacted. Thomas said insurers who have been contacted have said they are unable to determine whether they would be able to provide liability coverage until they are able to review the policy. 

Trustees expressed concerns about approving the policy without knowing what the effects would be on district liability; however, Thomas said they had to approve the policy in order to get it to insurers to review. Thomas also said that ultimately if the district is unable to be insured or if liability insurance proves to be too costly, the board could simply choose not to approve anyone to carry a firearm. He said it would still be a deterrent because no one would be aware that the policy had not been implemented and the potential would still exist for staff to be armed. 

Trustee Dave Bennett said he was concerned about the annual continuing firearm training requirements for staff, and he believes requiring an additional 12 hours of training annually on top of the initial 24 hours is cost prohibitive. According to the policy, the district would pay for any expenses related to initial training; however, the annual continuing training expenses would fall on the individual employees. 

Bennett said he feels this requirement will make it difficult for people to participate because of the costs involved, and he suggested a three- to five-year refresher training requirement. However, district attorney Geoff Phillips said the statute passed by the Wyoming Legislature requires the 12 hours of annual training and that is not something the district can alter. 

As for training expenses, it was brought up during the public forum on Tuesday, Jan. 30, that multiple certificates for training courses had been donated to the district for purposes of staff training. Evanston High School Principal Merle Lester said the donations were the result of posts on Facebook regarding the need to educate teachers about the page belonging to Front Sight, a firearm training facility located in Las Vegas. Lester said the Facebook posts resulted in Front Sight members from around the U.S. donating memberships and training sessions to the district. 

When it came time for voting, trustee Kay Fackrell said, “I’m almost sick that as a board we’re sitting here talking about guns in schools.” Fackrell, who said he himself has a concealed carry license, continued by saying, “We’re sort of blackmailed into doing this, I feel, by the state, and it just scares the hell out of me, and I’m not sure any amount of training is enough…” 

Fackrell also said he didn’t see any way for confidentiality to be maintained regarding who is carrying a firearm on school property. In spite of his concerns, Fackrell said, “I know I have to support this. I just wanted to make that statement.” 

Policy CKA is scheduled for a second reading and final vote during the next regular meeting on Tuesday, March 13.

Another controversial issue discussed at the meeting dealt with the school calendar for the next couple of years. Thomas said administration has made the decision to move away from the early-release professional development days for staff and instead institute a delayed-start Monday schedule, in which every school in the district would start one hour later every Monday. The only half-days in the schedule would be on the last Fridays of the quarter. 

Thomas said the district has an obligation to provide teacher professional development time, while also preserving student educational time. He said the half-day Fridays have been detrimental to student attendance and also that teachers who may be coaches are frequently unable to attend Friday training sessions. 

According to Thomas, the plan is to ask parents to keep kids home for an extra hour on Monday mornings if at all possible. Bus schedules and start times will be pushed back exactly one hour. For parents who are unable to keep kids home, support staff will be at each school to supervise students who need to come at the usual time. 

Thomas said he knew it was going to be an inconvenience for staff and for parents. “This is going to be challenging for some, but we ask them to support this because it will be good for kids because it’s good for teachers.”

Bennett said he feels this schedule is going to disrupt the entire community and he has concerns about teachers actually showing up early on Monday mornings for the professional development time. He said, “You have teachers who are not on time now, what makes you think they’ll be on time for this?”

Bennett said he advocated moving to a four-day school week for students, but Thomas said that would still create a problem for coaches and other teachers who are unable to be at school on Fridays. 

Despite Bennett’s voiced objections, the board was again unanimous in voting to approve the calendar with the delayed start Mondays. 

Other items on the agenda included an update from the transportation department. George Dickerson, transportation director, said the district has been approved to replace one bus this year since the state has instituted a freeze on new bus purchases unless a severe condition waiver has been granted. 

Dickerson said he is concerned about the budget and the long-term future of the buses, and said the district is looking at ways to save money. 

“To maintain busing services, we may have to make some difficult and unpopular decisions,” he said, which may include fewer trips or requiring more students to be on each bus to save dollars. 

Finally, Jaraun Dennis shared a proposal with the board to implement an online payment system next school year for parents to use to pay school fees. Dennis said the plan would be to have the system accessible through PowerSchool, and parents would be able to use it to pay toward meal accounts, registration and activity fees, yearbooks, etc.

Dennis said it would be more convenient for parents because they would be able to pay for multiple children at different schools with one transaction, and it would save the district from checks being returned for insufficient funds. 

He said the board would need to decide what to do with the fee charged to any business for credit and debit card purchases. He said the three options are to pass the fee on to parents, to have the district absorb the fee, or to develop some sort of split where both parents and the district are paying a portion of the fee. 

Dennis said he estimated the fees would amount to somewhere between $5,000-8,000 annually, which isn’t a huge amount of money but with the current budget constraints is still significant. Thomas said he recommended the shared cost approach. The online payment proposal will be discussed again at the next meeting on March 13.