The mother of Alyssa Alhadeff, a student who was killed in her English class during the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, stood before a room full of lawmakers and state officials on Wednesday. 

Lori Alhadeff held a portrait of her daughter in her arms as she applauded Utah for becoming the sixth state to pass “Alyssa’s Law,” legislation mandating silent panic alarms in classrooms that are directly linked to law enforcement.

“We are taking momentous steps forward in safeguarding our children’s well-being,” Alhadeff said, adding the bill represents “our collective commitment to providing a secure learning environment for every child in Utah.”

Anti-school shooting bill

The 2024 Utah Legislature last month passed , and Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed it into law on March 12. The sweeping school safety and security bill includes not only “Alyssa’s Law,” but also creates a set of uniform, minimum safety standards all Utah schools must adhere to. It designates armed school employees as guardians, requires threat reporting if employees are aware of a particular safety concern, and links the state’s SafeUT Crisis Line to Utah’s intelligence database.

To enact HB84, the Utah Legislature approved $100 million one-time money and $2.1 million in ongoing funding.

To highlight HB84 — along with seven other bills packaged together as legislation that will benefit Utah’s future generations — Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson ceremoniously signed the bills on Wednesday at the University of Utah’s Bennion Center.

HB84’s sponsor, Rep. Ryan Wilcox, R-Ogden, said his bill is meant to address a reality in the U.S. that “isn’t going away for us.” School shootings, he said, are not a tragedy that “we can pretend isn’t happening.”

He thanked the parents of the Parkland, Florida shooting victims for helping craft Utah’s legislation and ensuring “when our kids go to school, all they’re worried about is learning rather than catastrophic violence.”

“That isn’t something that they should have to worry about. But it is something that we do,” Wilcox said. “It is a responsibility of parents, the schools, of the adults who can do a lot more to prepare and make sure that they don’t have to worry about it.”

Henderson stood in for Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, who originally was expected to attend the signing but was unable to due to a family emergency. His wife, first lady on Wednesday to remove degenerative discs in her neck after “weeks of debilitating pain,” according to the governor’s office.

Henderson applauded HB84 and other bills aimed at improving opportunities for Utah’s youth and parents.

“We are a family friendly state,” Henderson said. “We care about our children, our educators, our education system. We care about the future. And this is an opportunity that we put our money where our mouth is.”

The full list of bills Henderson ceremoniously signed included:

• provides $1.5 million to provide instruction on child sexual abuse and human trafficking. It was supported by the nonprofit , which hopes it will help reduce sexual abuse.
• allows a state employee to use parental leave for a variety of reasons, including time for a child or an incapacitated adult with whom the employee is assuming a parental role, including foster care. It also allows a state employee to use postpartum recovery leave to recover from a childbirth that occurs at 20 weeks or greater and provides flexibility so they don’t have to use the leave in a single continuous period of time.
• uses $8.4 million in one-time state money to increase the amount of funding available to teachers for classroom supplies. It provides $500 to go to elementary school classroom teachers and $250 to go to middle and high school teachers specifically for classroom supplies.
• mandates school districts to develop paid leave policies for parental and postpartum recovery. It requires a minimum of three weeks off for someone adopting, becoming a foster parent, a grandparent taking custody, or a spouse of someone giving birth, as well as requiring six weeks of paid postpartum leave for Utahns who give birth.
• uses $8.4 million to give stipends of $6,000 to support educators while they’re full-time student teachers.
• raises legal standards in child custody cases with the intention of protecting kids from abusive parents. It was named “” after Leah Moses’ 16-year-old son, Om Moses Gandhi, who was murdered by Moses’ ex-husband.
• uses over $100 million in one-time money and $2.1 million in ongoing funding to increase .  uses $3.3 million to create a pilot project called the , which provides stipends and scholarships to young adults who participate in a year of community service, according to the University of Utah. Participants would receive an hourly stipend and a $7,400 scholarship in exchange for 1,700 hours of service with an approved partner organization.

Florida lawmakers approved a bill aimed at increasing school safety on the sixth anniversary of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. Meanwhile, they also were considering rolling back a state law that increased the minimum age for purchasing a gun that lawmakers passed following the shooting.

Lawmakers in the House Education & Employment Committee held a moment of silence Wednesday morning following their vote to approve the school safety legislation to commemorate the 17 people killed in the shooting. The proposal, , from Republican Rep. Dana Trabulsy of St. Lucie County, would require entry points and classroom doors in public schools to be locked unless a staff member is guarding them.

“Sadly, there are 17 victims and their friends and families that will never look at Valentine’s Day the same, and that’s why the school safety bill was born six years ago, and that’s why we continue to hear a school safety bill every year so that we can continue to build upon what we’ve learned from previous years and instances,” Trabulsy said.

Additionally, the law would require the Office of Safe Schools to conduct unannounced inspections of schools to ensure they comply with all safety requirements. Those inspections would happen every three years, and schools found out of compliance would face reinspection within six months.

The proposal passed the committee with unanimous support.

Backslide

On Tuesday, the eve of the mass shooting’s anniversary, in the House that would lower the age of purchasing a firearm from 21 to 18 and allow someone to get a gun if the Florida Department of Law Enforcement can’t determine that person’s eligibility within three days.

“So as far as I’m concerned, candidly, that bill and so many others in this building this year are a slap in the face to my community, to the victims and their families, and really is absurd,” said Broward County Democratic House Rep. Dan Daley during the remote Tuesday news conference.

Under the school-safety bill, people would also be prohibited from flying drones over any school without permission from the administration. Republican Rep. Randy Fine said that had been a problem for Jewish day schools, which the committee also approved to receive additional funding Wednesday through a bill he sponsored.

“I just want folks to know this was an issue that came up after Oct. 7, where drones started flying over Jewish day schools, and FDLE told us, ‘There’s nothing you could do. They can fly them over,’” Fine said. “While the issue is only affecting Jewish day schools, frankly, drones shouldn’t be flying over any schools.”

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