Oklahoma Senator James Lankford has joined his fellow colleagues in introducing the Safe Schools Act, which would allow for COVID-19 money to protect schools.

This bill would allow for schools to use COVID money assigned to the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund that has not yet been spent to go toward security measures such as locks, panic buttons, security systems and paying school resource officers. As Lankford introduced the bill with his fellow associates, he had this to say:

“Currently, our schools nationwide have over $100 billion in unspent COVID relief funds they can’t use for school security. We should give schools the option to use their existing grant money for security if they choose so schools can prepare their facilities for returning students this fall.”

From 2006 to 2018, there were 67 attempted attacks against schools. Two-thirds of those schools had no system in place to alert officials something suspicious was happening.