SafeUT leaders told the Utah School Security Task Force that the app logged 26,808 chats and 8,985 tips in fiscal year 2024 and that functionality required by House Bill 84 is now live: SafeUT began pushing tips that meet a threat-to-life or threat-to-others threshold to the Statewide Information Assessment Center (SIAC) on Dec. 6. From Dec. 6–31 SafeUT sent 34 such tips to SIAC, the presenter said.

Rachel Luzinski, director of Community Crisis Services at Huntsman Mental Health Institute, said SafeUT’s tip volume shows the service is being used for concerns beyond suicide, noting that in FY24 bullying overtook suicide as the most-reported tip category. Luzinski said 758 tips in the year explicitly pertained to potential school threats or active-violence concerns.

Luzinski outlined a three-phase plan for app enhancements. Phase 1 (near-term) introduces multiple user profiles and enhanced notification templates so people who have multiple roles (for example, a teacher who is also a parent) can receive appropriate messages from all associated schools. Phase 2 will add optional location services and geofenced alerts so a person with the app on their phone can receive targeted messages if they enter an affected area. Phase 3 will add an emergency protocol and a credentialed law-enforcement dashboard that permits approved law-enforcement users to send outbound emergency notifications to app users in an affected area; Luzinski said credentialed law-enforcement users would not see private mental-health chat content, only the ability to send verified outbound alerts.

Luzinski said the team aims to complete the three phases over the summer and into the 2025–26 school year, with phased rollouts beginning as early as August–September 2025. She asked districts and the public to continue downloading and using SafeUT and to consider turning on location services in- app to support potential emergency notifications.

Task force members discussed contractor procurement for safety products and noted that SafeUT is state-owned and maintained; members urged districts to consult the state team before contracting long-term with external vendors for school-safety apps or services.