Observed every June 1-7, CPR and AED Awareness Week spotlights how learning CPR can save lives. In fact, according to the American Heart Association, it can double or even triple a person’s chance of survival. Just last month, a neighbor performed life-saving CPR on a 4-year-old boy with autism who wandered into his apartment complex and jumped in the pool. Kudos to the 12-year-old who witnessed the incident and immediately ran to alert his father.
So this week, we invite you to help us celebrate CPR and AED Awareness Week by learning Hands-Only CPR. It only takes two simple steps and adults and teens alike can easily learn.
Call 9-1-1
Push hard and fast in the center of the chest until help arrives
Wondering if you’re doing it properly? Make sure you’re pushing on the chest at a rate of 100-120 compressions per minute. Many people find that learning Hands-Only CPR is easier if they learn it to a song that shares the same number of beats per minute. Examples include:
“Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees
“Crazy in Love” by Beyoncé featuring Jay-Z
“Hips Don’t Lie” by Shakira
“Walk the Line” by Johnny Cash
Share your favorite song that helps you perform Hands-Only CPR by tagging us on social media.
And remember, CPR training is not mandatory for teachers in every state. Similarly, not all states have laws in place that require students to learn CPR before they graduate high school. So, it’s important to encourage your school community to get involved…especially when every second counts!
From contact tracing to diagnosing signs of anxiety in students, school nurses have taken on much more during the pandemic. Now, lawmakers in states like Texas and North Carolina are proposing legislation that requires more districts to employ full-time nurses in schools. This article details school nurses’ integral role in fighting COVID-19 and keeping our school communities safe.
Last September, as Covid-19 vaccine candidates were rapidly advancing, Katherine Park and six of her fellow school nurses in St. Louis County, Mo., envisioned school-based vaccination sites as an extension of the district’s pandemic response plan, which they had been working on for months. They reached out to the local health department, letting it know the district had buildings for use and more than 30 school nurses who could jump in on administering shots.
“Honestly, our health department here was kind of surprised that we even reached out to them,” said Park, who is also the interim director of health services at Parkway Schools, a public school district in western St. Louis County. “It’s almost like they had never really considered they could utilize us.”
Park said that many people don’t realize how much school nurses do to manage student health care on a daily basis, from administering insulin injections to giving seasonal flu vaccinations.
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The inauguration of Joe Biden takes place this week. The President-elect recently proposed a $1.9 trillion stimulus package which includes new aid for K-12 and higher education. Here are the details on his approach, which has been called a “rescue plan” aimed at reopening schools.
(Updated 1/14) A new, $1.9 trillion stimulus package proposed by President-elect Joe Biden would dedicate an additional $170 billion for K-12 schools and higher education, as well as spending billions more to prop up the state and local governments that are critical to funding education.
Biden’s announcement comes less that a month since Congress approved a $900 billion Covid relief package that included about $82 billion for education. The December 2020 package provides:
$54.3 billion for K-12 schools, largely delivered through Title I funding. That’s about four times what schools received in the CARES Act approved in March.
$22.7 billion for higher education with $1.7 billion set aside for minority-serving institutions and close to $1 billion for for-profit colleges
$4 billion for governors to spend at their discretion, with $2.7 billion of that for private schools.Biden’s proposal would put another $130 billion toward K-12 schools and $35 billion to support higher education institutions. Another $5 billion would go to governors to use at their discretion for the “hardest hit” K-12, higher education or early education programs. The K-12 dollars would be focused on helping schools reopen, though the allowable uses would be quite broad, A portion would be used challenge grants focused on educational equity.
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As schools grapple with reopening plans across the country, education leaders, teachers unions, and parents clash over what they believe to be the safest path forward. A recent study offers new insights about how school impacts public health.
Since the beginning of this pandemic, experts and educators have feared that open schools would spread the coronavirus further, which is why so many classrooms remain closed. But a new, nationwide study suggests reopening schools may be safer than previously thought, at least in communities where the virus is not already spreading out of control.
The study comes from REACH, the National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice, at Tulane University. Up to this point, researchers studying the public health effects of school reopening have focused largely on positivity rates. As in, did the rate of positive coronavirus tests among kids or communities increase after schools reopened?
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Over the weekend, the CDC director and FDA gave final approval for emergency use authorization of the first COVID-19 vaccine in the US. As questions surrounding efficacy and distribution arise, some school and public health officials say vaccination requirements may be on the way.
Note: The recent authorization is for people 16 and older.
…pediatricians and school and public health officials are bracing themselves for and bristling against the onslaught of questioners asking the one thing they don’t want to talk about. At least not yet, anyway.
Will children be required to get vaccinated against COVID-19 to return to school?
“You hear the questions about whether vaccines should be mandatory or not,” says Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers. “That’s not the question to be asking right now.”
“The questions to be asking right now are, ‘Is it effective? Is it going to be free? Is it widely accessible?'” she says. “What we’re not doing right now – regardless of what I personally think – we’re not weighing in on whether a vaccine should be mandatory or not right now because that’s not an appropriate question right now.”
The caveats of “right now,” “yet” and “at this moment” do a lot of heavy lifting in conversations about immunization requirements, and that’s because the answer is complicated and not as straightforward as parents would probably like. Not only does it depend on where families live, as different states have different vaccination requirements for schools, but it also depends on drug companies enrolling more children in their trials in order to amass enough data to show – as most pediatricians and public health experts fully expect – that it’s efficacious and safe in children.
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It took four months to plan, write, field, analyze and prepare the final summary, but through the hard work of students and faculty from Boston University, in partnership with our team, we are excited to share this report with you.
We can boil down the results of the State of School Safety 2020 survey and report to this: we are headed in the right direction.
When we first set out to report on the state of school safety in 2018, the world was a different place. In the wake of the Parkland school shooting, educators were grappling with safety threats but lacked resources, parents were hungry for details about plans, and students demanded to be heard. Communication about school safety was sparse, and parents and students were not confident in their schools’ safety preparedness.
In 2019, the State of School Safety report showed a continued disconnect among stakeholders about school safety. Educators felt more prepared than students and parents. Students still felt they did not have a voice in school safety decision making, and parents and students sought increased communication about plans and protocols. Parents and students were unsure how to access mental health experts in their schools. However,educators and parents both felt a sense of optimism that schools have the expertise to improve school safety, and educators showed a deeper understanding of the role mental health plays in school safety.
Results of the State of School Safety 2020 report indicate we have come a long way in three years. Not only have we increased understanding among all stakeholder groups, we have fostered a more proactive culture of comprehensive school safety awareness and saw educators enhance the safety of their schools through easily accessible improvements. While we love seeing the impact of our work, there is still much more to do.
As you dive into the report, you will see we delivered it to you in a more visual format, which we hope will make it more accessible to all members of your community. We also divided the results across our framework for comprehensive school safety, making it easier for you to parse out feedback for various members of your safety team.
The strides we’ve taken are worth recognizing, but we must stay vigilant in our cause – school safety is not an item you can ever cross off your to-do list. The more we learn and as threats continue to evolve, we must stay alert, committed, and invest in all areas of school safety.
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This week school communities and safety professionals across America celebrate Safe Schools Week and we at Safe and Sound Schools invite you to take this opportunity to rethink school safety.
Our work with schools, community members, and professionals across the country, is greatly enriched by many and varied perspectives on school safety. Despite many different ideas and views on the issue, we’ve learned that it’s an issue that unites us all. We all want our schools–our children and loved ones to be safe to learn and work at school. But what does school safety mean to you? The truth is that it depends on your lens. Are you a student? A parent? An educator? School staff? A mental health professional? An administrator? A safety professional?
What does school safety mean to you?
Depending on who you are, where you are, and what your experiences have been, you may be concerned with any number of issues from gang violence and bullying, to active shooter and natural disasters. School safety covers a lot of topics–more than ever today. So how do we make sure that we cover all the bases and still keep an eye on the big picture? How do we ensure a truly comprehensive approach? We bring it all together.
We developed a Framework for Comprehensive School Safety Planning and Development just for this purpose. We like to call it the Big Six. Six key categories, or pillars, that all together support school safety.
(1) Mental & Behavioral Health: Here threat assessment teams and professionals and and school-based mental health providers such as school psychologists, counselors, and social workers work together to develop the programs, plans, services, and resources that support prevention and intervention for the safety of individuals and the community.
(2) Health & Wellness: From allergy and trauma care; to spotting signs of abuse and neglect; to nutrition and physical activity; and stress management and self care, tending to the health and wellness needs of our school communities helps foster a successful and safe learning environment.
(3) Physical Environment: Elements of architecture, design, CPTED (Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design), security, tools and technology help to create and enhance our schools in order to naturally provide for a safe and supportive learning environment.
(4) Culture, Climate & Community: Fostering a safe and welcoming school culture is a fundamental part of school safety. How does it feel to be in school? Do students, educators, staff, and volunteers feel safe and comfortable enough to learn and grow? Here we explore programs and resources that help develop a positive culture and climate, and educate and activate the whole community for the benefit of all.
(5) School Law, Policy & Finance: There are federal, state, and local codes and laws that schools must abide by to ensure the physical safety and civil rights of students and staff. Then there’s the funding and financial planning required to provide for the trainings, tools, programs, and physical improvements that support our school safety efforts. These are the rules of the road and the tools to plan for the journey.
(6) Operations & Emergency Management: From everyday operations such as transportation, arrival and dismissal to emergency operations such as evacuation and reunification, school communities must examine the full spectrum of crisis prevention, mitigation, response, and recovery operations and the people involved to ensure safety for everyone, every day.
We created this framework to help you rethink school safety, and help you realize how you and so many others are a part of it. Where do you fit? What can you offer? Where will you start? Who will you invite to join you in working for a safer today and tomorrow?
As you rethink school safety, you will have many more questions than answers. Though one thing is for certain, it takes all of us together to ensure that our schools are truly safe and sound.
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