While he still used the platform to promote the Trump Administration’s tough immigration policies, Attorney General Jeff Sessions returned his department’s focus to the issue of school safety on Monday, during a speech to the National Association of School Resource Officers.

“At the direction of President Trump, the entire government has put renewed attention on this issue,” Sessions said to the gathering of law enforcement officers, nearly 30 of whom were from Alabama.

“We at the Department of Justice are investing in you in many ways and in particular by providing funding for cities and states to hire school resource officers,” he said.

Sessions announced 25 million new grant dollars to be dispersed for purposes of “better training and for technology to improve emergency reporting,” though he did not specify who would receive the money.

“We made these grants because we listened to you,” Sessions told the crowd.

Sessions joins a group of several Alabama public officials who have addressed the issue of school safety in the months following the Marjory Stoneman Douglass High School shooting, even as other issues such as immigration have crowded it out of many public conversations.

Last week, a coalition of officials from the Baldwin County Public School System, County Commission, and Sheriff’s Office announced a plan to put an SRO in each public school.

Currently, some of the county’s 46 schools share SROs, according to WALA Fox 10 News.

“I am convinced that this is not only doable, but this is the best course of action to ensure we are prepared on our public school campuses,” Baldwin County Sheriff Huey “Hoss” Mack said in a news conference.

“I’ve spoken to every police chief in Baldwin County and experts from around the nation and this will give us full-time, fully-armed and trained law enforcement to protect our kids and employees on each and every school campus, and I’m not aware of this being done in any other county in Alabama…” Mack said.

Gov. Kay Ivey announced in May the Alabama Sentry Program, which allows school administrators whose schools do not have an SRO to be trained to maintain a firearm on campus. The program, Ivey said in a statement, functions as a temporary measure of safety until the legislature authorizes another solution, such as adding additional SROs to schools.

@jeremywbeaman is a contributing writer for Yellowhammer News