JISD prepared for HB 496

Jacksboro ISD was years ahead of the game when it came to some new mandates laid out in HB 496 by the Texas Legislature in their 86th session.

The bill, which went into effect at the start of the new year, requires school districts to provide bleeding control kits in easily accessible areas of campuses, use the kits in their emergency preparedness plans and provide agency-approved training to personnel who may be expected to use the kits.

“When we are getting all of these legislative updates from the legislative session, it seems like they just mandate more and more,” Assistant Superintendent Brad Burnett said. “Well when this came out, we just kind of looked at each other and breathed a sigh relief, like we are ahead of the curve on this thing.”

Superintendent Dwain Milam said they decided to implement the bleeding control kits, often referred to as Stop the Bleed kits because of a national campaign, three years ago due to the increasing frequency of mass casualty events at schools.

“We went and looked at what happened at Virginia Tech (University) and what happened at Sandy Hook (Elementary School) and those things,” Milam said. “Several of those folks who lost lives, lost them not from the gunshot wound itself, but because there was no way to get medical help to them right away. It has changed a little bit now, but whenever Sandy Hook and Virginia Tech took place, paramedics weren’t allowed into those buildings until they were deemed safe. My gosh, if I got a wound in my leg, well that is typically not a life threatening wound, but if I lay there for two hours while waiting on the building to be safe for a paramedic to come in then may I lose my life just from that.”

The kit must include tourniquets, chest seals, compression bandages, bleeding control bandages, space emergency blankets, latex-free gloves, markers and scissors.

“We keep it in that plastic seal for a couple reasons, and this one has never been open and I pray none of ours ever have to be opened,” Milam said. “I don’t know if there is anything in here that has an expiration date on it, so they can be here for a long long time that way. (…) So something as simple as a chest wound, if something were to go through and puncture that lung, this wrapper that is on the outside can actually be used to seal the front and back of that as well. Everything in here has got a purpose.”

He added the district has placed a kit near the door in every JISD classroom, office and vehicle. He added the district paid for the majority of the kits, which cost less than $100, with their own money. However, Jacksboro Vision Group purchased a training kit which includes a portion of a leg dummy to practice stuffing a wound.

For the full story, see the Wednesday, Jan. 15, edition of the Jacksboro Herald-Gazette.