Legislative Bills

The changes would increase the ability to enforce the law by not allowing any manual manipulation and thereby making Utah roads safer for all.

Exposure to lead can seriously harm a child's health, including damage to the brain and nervous system, slowed growth and development, learning and behavior problems, and hearing and speech problems. No safe blood lead level in children has been identified. Passage of this legislation will reduce or eliminate children's exposure to lead exposure in schools and child care centers.

We recognize the need to expand access to child care in Utah, but we also need to maintain high quality child care so these children's potential become a reality.

Training and Safety information to prevent injury

This bill would directly impact high school students learning to drive. We want them to get involved with bills that they can use to help them learn to advocate for themselves.

This bill replaces references to "children engaged in prostitution" with "children engaged in commercial sex";and directs law enforcement to investigate possible human trafficking of a child when they encounter a child engaged in commercial sex; This law also allows victims to seek Civil recourse from their human traffickers or those benefiting from human trafficking of the victim.

This bill extends the sunset date for the Intergenerational Poverty Plan Implementation Pilot program.

1. Strengthen families and children social and emotional well being through affordable housing, homelessness initiative.
2. Award grants to programs impacting those children in Intergenerational Poverty.

The Murdered and Missing Indigenous Relatives task force would be extended for a year. The task force will provide a report to the Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee with a summary of their findings and ideas for improvement to keep indigenous women and children safer.

This bill will help provide resources to individuals, including children, who are experiencing a mental health crisis.  Providing access and also education to families will help children needing this support. The bill specifically requires the Department of Human Services to establish a statewide stabilization services plan and standards for providing stabilization services to a child.  "Stabilization services" means in-home services provided to a child with, or who is at risk for, complex emotional and behavioral needs, including teaching the child's parent or guardian skills to improve family functioning.  The purpose is to increase access to mental health crisis services for individuals experiencing a mental health crisis and reduce the number of people incarcerated or using hospital emergency room resources.

Tobacco companies bring new products into the marketplace, and often will have no regulations in place for the first few years. Like we have seen with e-cigarettes, that gives them time to establish a market with the youth.

Children and youth have been exposed to obscene and pornographic material in school databases at school. These databases are unable to be filtered by the schools' filtering systems. The UETN contracts with companies to provide these databases for research purposes for students. Unfortunately, students have been exposed to harmful material to minors in some of these databases. This bill does not want to get rid of valuable school databases, it simply wants the databases to be responsible for the content that they contain so that children and youth will be protected from harm when they are doing research at school.

Radon exposure is the second leading cause of lung cancer and breathing it over prolonged periods of time can present a significant health risk to families.

This bill is known as Sarah's law. On July 30, Sarah Frei and her three friends were hit head-on by a drunk driver in Cache County. All four survived, but Sarah lost her legs and is paralyzed from the waist down. The drunk driver walked away. No child should be put in danger from drunk driving. Drunk driving is not only irresponsible but criminal. This bill will require those drivers who hurt or kill someone while driving drunk to see a judge before they can be released on bail.

The Committee and Commissions created make recommendations on how the commission and the state can effectively address the needs of children affected by intergenerational poverty.

This bill provides that each smart phone or tablet (device) that is manufactured after Jan. 1, 2022 , when activated in the state of Utah, will come with the filters blocking material harmful to minors. What this means for children in Utah, is if they are given a device manufactured after Jan. 1, 2022 it will have filters in place to protect them from materials harmful to children. This helps increase in the number of children who are protected from materials harmful to minors on their own device which may also protect other children who may have access to this device also. This is very important for Utah PTA to follow because device manufacturers have thus far been unwilling to manufacture safe devices for children and youth which are free from materials harmful to children. In fact, these device companies are likely to fight against this bill. We should advocate to protect the developing adolescent brains from this harmful material just as we advocate to protect their developing brains from alcohol or vaping or smoking.

There are many changes to consider in this bill.
1. Elected vs. Appointed. It is often said that elected school board members are more accountable than appointed ones. [Utah PTA supports non-partisan elections]
2. Reduction of school board members from 15 to 6. May reduce the voice of some communities. [Utah PTA does not have an official position]
3. Election term lengthening from 4 to 6 years with a maximum of 2 terms. Only one member may be affected by the 12 year maximum rule. [Utah PTA does not have an official position]
4. No party affiliation is noted. [Utah PTA supports non partisan elections]

The penalty will be increased with the sexual solicitation of a minor both online and in person.

While school buses remain the safest way for students to get to and from school, students who ride in buses are most vulnerable when they are outside the bus in the "danger zone", the area that they enter or exit a school bus.  In a recent one-day test with the state of Utah, officials found 917 drivers totally disregarded school bus stop arms, this translates into more than 165,000 Stop Arm Violations in a school year.

 Studies have shown that, without the threat of enforcement and without the public actually seeing or hearing about the law being enforced (this includes prosecution and conviction) there will be no change in behavior.

The first object of PTA is 'to promote the welfare of children', and the second leading cause of death of children and adolescents in Utah are firearm related; and many children and adolescents have ready access to firearms in the home;

Children drink more fluids per pound of body weight than adults and their bodies are more susceptible to contaminants and disease. Clean water is essential to the health of children. Water can become polluted in many ways including in place of learning.