Gov. Jared Polis vowed to improve students’ mental and physical safety in classrooms while speaking at Colorado’s annual School Safety Summit on Thursday.

Colorado is no stranger to school tragedies, from the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, to the STEM School Highlands Ranch mass shooting in 2019, to the string of shootings outside of Aurora high schools this time last year. Now, Polis said it’s time for the state to step up its response.

“It’s about keeping our kids safe in school,” Polis said. “As a parent of an 11-year-old and an 8-year-old, it’s something that’s on my mind. It’s on the minds of all parents and it’s something that we all wish we could worry less about. We need to up our game with regard to prioritizing keeping schools safe.”

Polis announced he plans to work with the summit attendees to formulate changes the state can make to improve school safety, such as reducing youth access to weapons via safe storage, increasing access to behavioral health services and improving emergency infrastructure in schools.

The summit partners included the Colorado School Safety Resource Center, Safe 2 Tell, the Attorney General’s Office, the Adams 12 School District and the University of Colorado’s Center for Study and Prevention.

Polis also touted moves the state has already made to address school safety, such as passing a public safety package this year that offers tens of millions of dollars for law enforcement grants and crime prevention. The package specifically targeted schools through a $6 million grant program for schools to fund violence prevention and a pilot grant to fund community efforts to prevent youth violence.

The state has also sought to improve youth mental health through the creation of the behavioral health task force in 2019 and recent extension and funding increases for the I Matter Program, providing six free behavioral health sessions to Colorado youth.

“We’re not done yet. We’re focused on doing a lot more to better support and improve school safety,” Polis said. “Our students can only be successful in the classroom and achieve academic success if our classrooms are safe. The future of Colorado and our country and the world has to be our young people. It’s our responsibility to invest in best practices that work.”

This builds on Polis’s five-year goal, announced at the beginning of 2022, to make Colorado one of the top 10 safest states in the U.S.

This year, Polis also proclaimed October as “School Safety Month” in Colorado, dedicated to highlighting the best practices for keeping schools safe and spreading the word about existing resources.