ATLANTA () – Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and state leaders are prioritizing school safety this legislative session as they wrap up the first week at the state capitol.

“We made yearly funding to strengthen our base budgets. In total, we have allocated $294 million dollars for campus safety so far and my budget proposal includes a further $159 million dollars for that purpose,” said Governor Kemp.

The governor wants to give public schools a one-time $50 million dollar grant to improve school safety. That will bring the total grant of $86,000 dollars per school for security.

Governor Kemp said the funds would give each of the state’s more than 2000 schools another $21,000 dollars to spend on safety.

In addition to the funding, the lieutenant governor wants a law that would mandate teachers and school employees to wear panic buttons.

Georgia’s state school superintendent wants lawmakers to fund mental health services for students. This because only one third of Georgia’s schools currently have them, and also is pushing for a crisis alert system and police officers in every school.

“I think school safety is a major issue. We will have legislation relating to that to secure the schools. Last year in the budget, we secured that there would be a school safety officer post certified as in peace officer in every school, not just system. We paid for that in an ongoing fashion last year,” said State Senator Ben Watson.