WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Senator Rick Scott announced legislation to provide funds for every school in America, both public and private, to place an armed officer on its campus to keep students and teachers safe. This funding, which will be made available to the states through block grants, will be diverted away from the nearly $80 billion previously authorized for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to hire up to 87,000 new agents.

Senator Rick Scott said, “Following the horrific shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, I fought hard as governor to make sure there were more armed officers in our schools. Today, every public school in Florida has an armed police officer, sheriff’s deputy, or an individual who has completed the rigorous training provided through our Guardian Program. These brave public servants are in our schools to keep our kids and teachers safe from the evil that we’ve seen far too often across America. The tragedy in Nashville made clear that more must be done to keep our schools safe. Washington spends money on all sorts of wasteful ideas and the massive expansion of the IRS is a prime example of that. We need to put the dollars we spend to good use. These funds should absolutely be used instead to provide block grants to states so they can increase school security at every school and keep kids safe.

“I cannot stress enough that this funding should be available to ALL schools. After our Jewish Days Schools in Florida were facing an influx of threats, we also specifically allocated funding to increase security at these schools. Our religious schools need to be protected and that is why my legislation will make sure it allows all schools to use these dollars. I will be filing a bill on this soon and I look forward to my colleagues in the Senate giving it their support.”

Additional details on this legislation, as well as bill text, will be made available in the coming days.

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