ALBANY -- New York should fund putting at least one armed school resource officer in every school in the state, the state Sheriffs' Association said Thursday.
The request comes after the school shooting in Florida last week that left 17 students dead and heightened the national debate over school safety.
The Sheriff's Association said the state Legislature and Gov. Andrew Cuomo should fund one armed officer in every school as part of the state budget for the fiscal year that starts April 1.
“This will be an expensive undertaking,” Wayne County Sheriff Barry Virts, the group's president, said in a statement. "But we owe it to our children, and their parents, to provide a safe place for education to take place.”
Virts said New York already spends millions of dollars each year to protect a "relatively small number of judges," so "surely we can also find the money to protect our most defenseless people – the children we send off to school each day.”
With about 4,750 public schools and nearly 2,000 private schools through grades K-12, the association estimated the cost would be the equivalent of hiring one more teacher in each school.
School-resource officers were popular decades ago, but funding has waned as questions grew over their effectiveness and the cost of having them.
The sheriffs said the officers are now typically funded locally by the district or the county.
There was no immediate comment from Cuomo or the Democratic-controlled Assembly on whether they would support more school officers this year.
Senate Republicans said they passed legislation last year to put an armed officer in every school and will consider additional measures this year.
“It’s important that we consider additional steps to protect students while they are at school and away from their families, and anything we can do to improve security has to be right at the top of that list," Scott Reif, spokesman for the Senate GOP, which controls the chamber, said.
Cuomo on Thursday announced New York will partner with other Northeast states to share information about illegal guns and dangerous people to bolster their cross-state cooperation.
He didn't address whether to add more officers in schools, but he did rip the idea from President Donald Trump to allow teachers to be armed in schools.
"The answer is not to make the schools armed camps," Cuomo said. "That’s where they are going to go in Washington because that’s where the NRA wants them to go -- because it means selling more guns."
The Sheriffs Association said they work with districts to try to keep schools safe, including a Rapid Responder program. But having an officer on site would be critical in the case of an emergency and to thwart an attack.
“All of these preparations are important,” Washington County Sheriff Jeff Murphy said in a statement.
"But the most important thing we can do is to get an armed deputy or police officer into every school immediately.”