State money allocated for security improvements in Pennsylvania’s school districts may not be available until 2019.

During a conference call Wednesday, organized by the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, a group of four state senators said a funding formula is still being worked out to determine how $60 million included in this year’s budget will be allocated.

“There will be surveys and assessments of all the districts and schools,” Sen. Jim Brewster, a member of the Pennsylvania School and Safety Committee, said. “When we start getting some of that information, we’ll be able to better come up with a funding formula.”

Each of the state’s 500 public school districts is guaranteed $25,000, according to a package of bipartisan legislation, dubbed Act 44, signed by the governor earlier this year. Then, public school districts and 300 other schools, consisting of career and technical institutes, intermediate units, charter schools and rehabilitative schools, will be able to apply for grants.

Sen. Mike Regan, a former U.S. Marshal, said the money could go toward categories such as safety and security assessments, schoolwide positive behavior support, training to identify problematic behaviors, all hazards planning, security planning and technology and costs associated with school resource officers, guidance counselors and psychologists, among other things.

“When I toured school districts, the major thing I heard was money was needed to deal with the mental health aspect of the safety discussion,” Sen. Wayne Langerholc, also a member of the Pennsylvania School and Safety Committee, said. “I’d like to see a decent amount of this money go toward guidance counselors and school psychologists in support of their work to help us with the mental health aspect.”

Physical building improvements will likely also be a part of districts’ decision making on how to use its money.

“In this day and age, you’re not retrofitting a building to add a sprinkler system, you’re adding metal detectors and security cameras tied into the local police department,” Brewster said. “Times have changed.”

Times have also changed in the state’s financial line of thinking.

The state is increasing its investment in school safety funding from $8.53 million to almost $70 million, lawmakers said. No new money was added to the budget to achieve that goal, they added.

Of the Act 44 money, $7.5 million is earmarked toward reducing community violence.

Some school districts are ahead of others when it comes to security. That will play into the funding formula when it is eventually determined.

“We talked to a district where the superintendent was concerned because they don’t have metal detectors and a lot of their students go hunting after school, so they have a rifle in their vehicles during the day,” Langerholc said. “Those are issues that need to be addressed.”

If districts are spending money on improvements, there is the potential to reimburse those expenses with Act 44 money, lawmakers said. That determination would come out of future committee discussions.

For now, the $60 million is a one-time investment, but each senator on Wednesday’s conference call lobbied for a consistent level of school safety funding.

“We have to keep this going,” Brewster said. “When you catch up, someone will always be trying to beat the system. That’s why it’s important to keep this money in the budget moving forward.”