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Kos announces CPR program in high schools

Date: 10/2/2015

CHICOPEE – Chicopee Comprehensive High School senior Kiarah Bergeron and junior Dayja Cavette already have a skill that eventually all Chicopee high school students will have: being certified in CPR and know how to use an Automated External Defibrillator (AED).

The two students demonstrated how to save a live on a demonstration dummy as part of the announcement that all freshmen at the Chicopee High, Chicopee Comp and Chicopee Academy will take a certification class starting this year.

Mayor Richard Kos said in four years every student in the high schools will be certified.

The certification will be part of the health curriculum at the schools, Kos added.

He said there are three educational and career advantages to the program. students will be exposed to the health care industry. They will begin to look “beyond themselves.” The certification will be an additional skill they can note for future jobs.

 He called the new program “job and career enhancement.”

Kos noted the support of the City Council in fusing the program through the health department and noted he “hasn’t met anyone who wasn’t positive [about the program].”

Kos said the cost of starting the program was about $30,000, which included the purchase of necessary equipment. He anticipated the cost would drop in years to come.

Sue Canning, executive director of KEVS Foundation, donated three AEDs to the high schools. She explained there are 350,000 deaths from sudden cardiac arrests every year and this is the number one killer of student athletes. She started the foundation in 2011 to honor her son Kevin who died from sudden cardiac arrest at the age of 19.

She called the program “a gift.”

Superintendent of School Richard Rege praised the program and called it part of the “very strong community service” that characterizes the high school.