Dear Neighbors,
From my family to yours, Happy Easter! After a busy week of session, I’m looking forward to heading to church with my family and sitting down for a good Easter meal.
Easter and Passover means we’re headed to a short break in the action next week. Before that happens, I wanted to make sure you received a quick update from St. Paul.
School Safety
This morning, House Republicans unveiled a series of proposals, along with $50 million in funding, relating to mental health and school safety. Keeping kids, teachers, and staff safe in Minnesota schools is a top priority. I’m supportive of these common sense measures like increasing the number of school resource officers, improving facility security, and establishing teams to identify possible threats in schools. These bills help to create a safer school environment without limiting the rights of law-abiding citizens.
The provisions in our plan include:
- School resource officers, student support personnel, and other school security programs funded through increased Safe Schools revenue, including a floor level of funding for small schools.
- School building security upgrades, and expanded use of Long-Term Facility Maintenance revenue for security projects, including emergency communications systems.
- School-linked mental health programming to ensure better outcomes for all kids.
- Physical security audit grants to provide state assistance to review facility security and crisis management policies.
- Suicide prevention training for teachers to help educators learn how to engage and assist students experiencing mental distress.
- School-based threat assessment teams established to assess, intervene, and report threats facing students, teachers, and staff.
Bill Passage
Just a couple hours ago, I passed a bill off the House floor, HF3972. The bill is this year’s Omnibus Liquor Bill and passed on a bipartisan vote of 114-7.
Please Contact Me
As always, please call or email if you have any questions on my email updates or any other issue facing the legislature.
Have a great weekend and Happy Easter,
Jim