Washington State Honored for School Safety

Washington has won a national award for an innovative school safety project. From the September 19th edition of Education Week:

When it comes to emergencies, be it a broken pipe or a school shooting, education and law-enforcement officials in Washington state believe most of their public schools are prepared—and the state has earned an award for making that happen.

Using federal money made available in the aftermath of the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado, the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs in 2001 launched an initiative to “map” all 2,250 schools in the state. The process involves bringing together floor plans, aerial photographs, response plans, relocation points, and evacuation routes.

In 2003, the legislature passed a law to expand the program to every public school in Washington. To date, 70 percent of the state’s schools have such safety maps in place, and the law-enforcement organization expects all will have them by December 2008.

In recognition, on Sep. 6, the state earned the 2007 Innovations Award in Homeland Security from the Falls Church, Va.-based Noblis, a nonprofit science and technology organization, and the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Good thinking, this. Having something accessible to emergency responders will save lives in the future.

are defibrillators worth the cost?

Our school has one: it's kept at the office, within sprinting range of most of the campus. But are automatic external defibrillators, which can cost thousands in implementation and training, worth the investment? An area study says "maybe."

A nationwide push to put portable defibrillators in every school, a response to several high-profile student deaths, may not be worth the cost, a new study concludes.

The survey of emergency response to schools in the Seattle area over 16 years found that students suffered cardiac arrests only 12 times and a third of these children had known heart problems.

Most of the cardiac arrests at schools between 1990 to 2005 involved adults - teachers, volunteers or people just walking on school property. And they occurred much more often in high schools and middle schools than elementary schools.

"I certainly have no objection to AEDs (automated external defibrillators)," said one of the researchers, Dr. Tom Rea, of the University of Washington's Harborview Medical Center. He's also medical director for King County Medic One, the county's emergency medical service.

But not every school has the money for a defibrillator, which each cost an average of $1,000 to $3,000, not including the cost to train school staff, he said. They decided to do the study after several states mandated the purchase of defibrillators for schools and others were considering similar measures, he said.

It sounds like mandatory CPR training might be a better investment--especially since CPR techniques need to be changed to reflect current research.

Best line of the article comes near the end: "According to the study, schools are one of the best places for adults to suffer cardiac arrest."