EVANSTON — The Uinta County School District No. 1 Board of Trustees held its regular meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 14, and, in what has been an ongoing conversation over the past year, school safety and security was again a focus of the meeting. Trustees Dave Bennett and Kerby Barker were not in attendance. 

Superintendent Ryan Thomas shared information on two new security features that have been added to district schools for the upcoming school year, in addition to the SafeDefend emergency notification and response system that was demonstrated to the board at the July meeting. The first is the Raptor Visitor Management System that will require all visitors accessing school hallways or student areas to have an access badge. 

Visitors to the schools will need to present identification the first time they request access. The identification will be scanned and a background check conducted immediately. Following the background check, a badge will be printed that includes the individual’s photo, the date and time, the areas of the building they will be accessing and the time they anticipate leaving the building. 

The identification information will be stored in the computer system, and on any subsequent visits to the school the visitor will only need to enter their name and details of that particular visit to have a badge printed. 

Thomas and facilities manager Jaraun Dennis said this will only need to be done for visitors going into student areas. Those who are visiting only the office to pay student fees, for example, will not need to print out a badge. 

Thomas said the system will be updated regularly to make sure information on criminal charges is current and added that people can be flagged in situations involving child custody and divorce. 

The second security feature is also designed to control access to the building. An A-phone system and video-controlled access points will be present in the entryway to each building. Visitors will have to press a button and state their name and business prior to being buzzed into the building office, after which they will have to go through the Raptor system to print out the badge for access into student areas. 

For buildings such as Evanston High School, this will be a significant change not only because of the Raptor and controlled access systems, but also because there will be only a single point of entry after the school day has begun, which has never before been the case at EHS. 

The SafeDefend system is currently being installed into all district facilities, and staff members will go through training on crisis response and the system itself prior to the first day of school. That system includes biometric fingerprint-activated modules that allow staff members to notify district administration and staff and law enforcement within seconds in the event of a crisis situation. The modules will be located in every classroom, common areas and hallways, and will also contain crisis items like flashlights, batons and trauma kits. 

Dennis said in the event of a crisis in one building, all other schools in the district will be notified and staff will have the ability to immediately lock all doors with a keypad located in the office while awaiting further instructions. In less than a minute, he said, all buildings can be locked and first responders can be en route to the scene of an incident, with specific details on where in the building a finger swipe occurred. 

Thomas said all of these features will require some adjustments on the part of staff, students and families and could be seen as inconvenient, but he said they are necessary to protect students. 

A letter sent to all district families in early August outlined all of these security features and alerted parents to the possibility that staff members may be carrying concealed firearms, following the district adoption of Policy CKA in March, pursuant to W.S. 21-3-132 that was adopted by the Wyoming State Legislature in 2017. 

At the Aug. 14 meeting, concealed carry approval was on the agenda. After moving into executive session for approximately 35 minutes, the board returned and quickly voted on the action item entitled “approval to conceal carry,” which passed unanimously. Due to the confidentiality requirements of policy CKA, it is not known to anyone but the board and superintendent how many staff members were approved to concealed carry or in which district facilities those staff members work. 

Thomas said the vestibule redesign project they hoped to complete in stages has been delayed. The initial plan was to have the entrances to Uinta Meadows, Davis Middle School and EHS redesigned over the summer, followed by redesign of other schools next summer. However, no contractors initially bid on the project, and Thomas said when they did receive bids they were for higher costs than the district was able to pay. The ultimate goal is still to have the entrances redesigned, but the other security features added for this school year are “a huge advancement,” said Thomas. 

When it comes to events in school buildings, Thomas said they will still need to work out how to handle those in terms of visitor access, although he knows of other schools in southwest Wyoming that require visitors to be buzzed into the building and go through the security checks even in the case of school events when many people are accessing the building. 

Thomas said the district is looking into signage to put up at all district facilities alerting visitors to the possibility of armed staff as well, which trustees have said at previous meetings they believe will be a deterrent for any would-be intruder. He said they have found “some pretty good ones with the intent that Kay (Fackrell) and Dave (Bennett) talked about, that are classy, I think.” 

Finally, Thomas and EHS Principal Merle Lester addressed closing the campus at the high school. Lester said that change won’t be taking place this year because of the need to make scheduling and building changes to accommodate a third lunch. Next year, however, Lester said the high school will be a closed campus for lunch for all students. 

Thomas said all of these changes and features may not all be working flawlessly by the time school starts but by the end of September will all be up and running with all features working. 

Dennis and Thomas said they were very excited about the new features and said both the board and staff deserve kudos for the effort put into security. Dennis said, “I think we’ve done a tremendous job.” 

Horizon High School Principal Shad Hamilton spoke about a statewide school security summit that took place in Cheyenne in early August, which he attended along with other staff. The summit coincided with a listening session with the federal school safety commission. Hamilton said he spoke at the listening session to discuss some of the efforts undertaken in the district to enhance security. He said there were two primary areas of focus at the summit, including school facilities and mental health. 

In other business, trustees granted permission to proceed on a federal grant that would allow the district to acquire two new school buses. Due to reimbursement changes at the state level, the district is unable to purchase buses that have reached the end of their useful life according to district standards but not state standards. Through the Environmental Protection Agency’s Diesel Emissions Reduction Act grant, the federal government would pay the bulk of the costs for two new buses.