EIGHTH-GRADERS TAKE LESSONS IN FIRST-AID AND CPR FROM RED CROSS

BENTON -- Thomas W. Kelly School District continued its emergency preparedness training this week by preparing eighth-grade students for emergency first-aid certification.

Some 68 students will take an examination today to receive cardio pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) certification from the American Red Cross. The students completed a two-day course earlier in the week that was conducted by school nurse Valerie Abernathy and her assistant, Kris Glueck. Abernathy and Glueck are certified by the American Red Cross to be CPR trainers.

Abernathy and Glueck incorporated the training into regular science periods. Students used special training dummies purchased by a grant for $8,653 received from Bootheel Healthy Start and additional funding from the North County Private Ambulance Service.

The training will benefit students and staff at school and throughout their lives, said special services coordinator Dorothy Deason, who wrote the grant. The equipment also will be used to train school staff and ambulance service employees."This is something we felt was important because they will be able to use this the rest of their lives," Deason said. "Anytime you can get hands on with the kids and they can see the usefulness of it, they're going to try harder and get more out of it."The eighth-graders were a logical choice for the training because their science curriculum is built around health issues. Many of the students also are left home alone in the afternoons, some as babysitters, while their parents are at work."Now if something happens, they've got those skills," said Abernathy.

Safety coordinator Joel Evans said the training is part of the district's efforts as a pilot school for the Missouri Center of Safe Schools. Each of the 10 pilot district is developing a comprehensive safety plan this year that will be used to help other Missouri school districts implement similar plans."It's just a small portion of our efforts," said Evans. "We're working on everything from violence and accident prevention to working through problems or crisis situations."The nurses said they were glad people trained to provide CPR and emergency first aid would be available if an accident or injury occurred at the school. The rural district's campus is fairly large, and it could take valuable minutes for nurses to be notified and reach the location of an accident, they said.

The training also would be beneficial in the case of a natural disaster, they said.""Being rural, I'd like to have the whole school know it," Abernathy said. "We're a long way away from a helicopter or even an ambulance. It's good to know that if we have a disaster, we have hands."