By Carolyn Cole
Published on August 14, 2008

Mustang School Board members voted to spend $85,000 for safety equipment Monday night, buying 50 school bus cameras and 12 automated external defibrillators.

Oklahoma lawmakers approved Senate Bill 923 last session, “encouraging” school districts to buy AEDs but did not provide any additional funding for the devices. The defibrillators are used to treat an irregular heartbeat, which officials said is the most common cause of sudden cardiac death among healthy youth during exercise and athletic competitions.

Because Mustang did not have AEDs when the law was passed, Athletic Trainer Chris Basco said the measure essentially increases the district’s liability in any medical emergency in which the device could be used.

“It’s pretty much 100 percent because the state has said you should have them,” he said.

The board chose a $22,500 contract with Phillips to buy 12 defibrillators, one for each school and another to be used at athletic events. The district received three bids, but Basco said he believed Phillips offered the best training program for school personnel and technical support for replacing batteries and pads and installing any future software.

Basco suggested asking five employees from each school to receive training with a Phillips official and take the information back to their buildings.

The company official has also offered to study each school building to make suggestions on the best placement of the AEDs to cut down response times in emergencies and also estimate how many more defibrillators Mustang will need to meet the American Heart Association’s Heart Safe Building recommendations. To be considered heart safe, Basco said an AED must be in reach within three minutes anywhere in the building.

Basco said he also recommended the Phillips device because of its ease of use. As the machine is used, he said, its computer program gives step-by-step instructions.
He took it home, and based on the program’s instructions alone, Basco said his 7-year-old daughter was able to practice using the machine on a human-sized paper cutout accurately.

Its instructions also support a person performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation, he said.

“There is a fear that you could hurt somebody — absolutely impossible,” he said. “There are certain rhythms that are shockable, so the thing isn’t going to allow you to shock if it is not safe.”

Athletic Director Mike Clark said he doesn’t know of any emergencies involving Mustang students at school in which a defibrillator would have helped but added neighboring districts have used AEDs.

The board also approved a $61,000 bid from Safety Vision for 50 school bus cameras. Transportation Director Mike Brown estimated it will cost another $2,400 to buy 8-gigabyte memory cards for three days of recording.

The project will be paid for using funds from an April 2007 bond issue.

Brown told school board members the color video cameras will be mounted near the driver’s seat and face toward students’ seats. The recorder box is about the same size as a car radio tuner and is mounted either below the control panel or on the dashboard. He said the box is secured, and only a few school employees would have access to the memory cards.

“Cameras provide a multitude of functions not only monitoring what the passengers are doing but what the driver does,” he said.

Safety Vision offered the lowest of three bids and pledged to complete work within a month, including training school officials to install and use systems, Brown said. Fifty cameras allow officials to outfit all of the special education and regular route buses with cameras, and he said he hopes the district will be able to install cameras on activity buses in the future.

He planned to buy three-day capacity memory cards, he said, because most problems involving bus routes are reported within a day.

“It’s another safety device to ensure a trouble-free ride,” he said.

Also Monday, Interim Superintendent Bonnie Lightfoot told board members Mustang Education Association and MSD negotiating team reached a tentative agreement, which teachers are expected to consider Monday. A special school board meeting was scheduled for 6 p.m. Aug. 28 at the Mustang Administration Building to hear the contract.

Board members also promoted Kathy Blackwell, a Mustang Middle School English teacher, to unassigned secondary assistant principal. Mustang Valley Elementary teacher Chris Sanders was selected as an unassigned elementary assistant principal, as well as Tina Floyd.