Pea Ridge Schools holds AED safety drills, earns Heart Safe School designation

Three campuses in the Pea Ridge School District successfully completed the Heart Safety Designation drill, partnering with local EMS and Arkansas Children’s Hospital to simulate a realistic scenario.

Pea Ridge’s junior high, intermediate and primary schools were all put through the exercise.

For the scenario, a CPR mannequin was placed in a random spot in each school, and the closest staff member was asked to respond to a “medical emergency.”

The staff member would then perform CPR on the dummy and use a nearby Automated External Defibrillator (AED), while calling the front office, who would then send the school’s safety team to the staff member’s location.

Someone from the safety team would then call a nonemergency line, with EMTs from Pea Ridge’s Fire Department responding to make the drill more realistic.

“Their nurses have done a lot of education with the staff. Everybody in the schools knows what to do if they find somebody that’s having a life-threatening emergency,” said Charles Wooley, the Project Adam Coordinator for Arkansas through Arkansas Children’s Hospital. “When somebody has a life-threatening emergency, the most important thing is, how quickly can we get lifesaving equipment and lifesaving interventions in place? And that’s exactly what they were able to do here.”

Pea Ridge local Jennifer Allison also attended the event, stating her support of the schools receiving this designation.

Allison said this is because of her previous experience at Pea Ridge in 2019, when her daughter, Kennedy Allison, was saved by a teacher and nurse who were AED trained after going into sudden cardiac arrest.

“She was just sitting in class second period and just melted to the floor,” said Allison. “The teacher sent students to get the nurse and the principal. They then called for the aid machine when she wasn’t responding to CPR. They then use the AED machine on her.”

Kennedy Allison’s story inspired Act 352 in Arkansas, a law that requires schools to have AEDs and have a cardiac emergency response plan by the 2025-2026 school year. Act 352 was signed into law in April.

“As bystanders, just as citizens, I think that it is kind of what we owe to our fellow man. We should be prepared to step in,” said Wooley. “The worst thing you could do is not do something.”