By Solvejg Wastvedt

MPR News/90.1 FM

Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton is pushing a school safety plan that would include funding for building upgrades, mental health programs and staff like counselors and school police officers.

The measures Dayton supports would also direct school districts to improve data-sharing about expelled students and to improve services for those students.

Dayton wants lawmakers to pass the school safety proposals as stand-alone legislation rather than as part of a wide-ranging bill.

“As students in America, we shouldn’t have to focus on if we will have a code red tomorrow. We should be focused on our grades, college entrance exams and our future,” Patrick Henry High School junior Elliot Gunderman said at a press conference.

Dayton is also urging lawmakers to pass gun control measures that include requiring criminal background checks for all gun sales, a move he said has broad public support.

“We’re just closing the loophole that allows people who couldn’t pass one of those background checks to go to a gun show or go to a private sale and get those guns with no safety protections whatsoever,” Dayton said.

A House committee heard a pair of the gun control proposals Dayton supports earlier in the session, but the measures were tabled and have not been acted on since.

Lawmakers have included many of the school safety items in broader education bills.