CPR.JPG

Melissa Isidro, an EMT with Jersey City Medical Center, does CPR training with students at the Cordero School in Jersey City as part of the CPR Family and Friends Program in 2012

(Jersey Journal file photo)

TRENTON — Starting with this fall's high school freshman class, public school students in New Jersey will be required to learn CPR and how to use defibrillators in order to graduate.

Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno — who is acting governor while Gov. Chris Christie campaigns for Republicans in Oklahoma and Kansas — signed the bill (A2072) today at Burlington Township Middle School, where a student collapsed in June and was saved by staff members who used CPR and an automated defibrillator.

"Put simply, this law will save lives," Guadgano said in a statement. “These critical skills are easy to learn and, as we heard today, can make all the difference in the world to someone in cardiac arrest. Our actions today ensure that more residents than ever will be equipped when the unthinkable happens."

The bipartisan-sponsored bill, which passed the Legislature with minimal opposition in June, requires public school districts and charter high schools to “provide instruction in cardiopulmonary resuscitation and the use of an automated external defibrillator to each student prior to graduation as part of district’s implementation of the Core Curriculum Content Standards in Comprehensive Health and Physical Education.”

The instructions must be modeled on programs from the American Heart Association, the American Red Cross or another “nationally recognized” group.

The first students to fall under the requirements are 9th graders who start this year.

According to statistics from the American Heart Association cited in Gaudagno’s press release, survival rates for those who suffer from cardiac arrest can “double or triple” if CPR is administered in the first few minutes.

William Tansey III, a spokesman for the American Heart Association in New Jersey, said in the release that New Jersey “will be creating a generation of lifesavers."

New Jersey already requires school athletic coaches to be certified in CPR and defibrillator use.

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