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No Guns in Schools

April 29, 2015

It seemed crazy to me when I first learned that “gun-free zones” really were not free of guns.

Apparently, while many school sports administrators and officials hustled to replace blank-shooting starter pistols with different kinds of devices for signaling the start of races at cross country, swimming and track events, state laws were carving out exceptions to allow other people to carry guns into those very same events.

Now there’s an effort by some to trade a ban on “open carry” in exchange for permission to carry concealed weapons onto school grounds.

We’re proud to know our colleagues at the Michigan Association of School Boards and the Michigan Association of School Administrators and the Michigan Association of Secondary School Principals are all saying “No” to any such deal.

I suspect that many of those very same school board members, superintendents and principals are gun owners. But they also seem to appreciate that “gun-free” should mean what it says; that except for law enforcement personnel in the exercise of their official duties, guns have no place in our schools or at school events.

Advancing CPR

November 24, 2015

This fall was the first for the requirement that all high school varsity head coaches have current certification in CPR.

If a coach was not CPR certified by the deadline (which was Sept. 17), that coach could not coach at or even be present at the MHSAA tournament where his/her team would be participating.

Only three of the MHSAA’s 750 member high schools failed to comply with that requirement. That’s progress.

But what we also hoped for was that schools which were not already doing so would use this new requirement as a means of providing or requiring CPR certification for assistant and subvarsity coaches as well. And it appears we’ve made some progress on this as well.

Of 640 responses received so far, 80 percent of schools arranged in-person CPR training for all high school varsity head coaches, and 67 percent included assistant and subvarsity coaches in this in-person training.

In the future, the MHSAA Representative Council will be considering refinements of the CPR requirement in order to increase the quantity of certified coaches and improve the quality of programs that are approved to fulfill the requirement. Continuing progress is imperative.