Published: November 30, 2007 10:54 pm            

Berea school wins fifth annual seat belt contest

Berea Community High School received its first Battle of the Belts title Thursday after having the highest seat-belt usage rate among local high schools.

The safety competition involving seat-belt usage rates among high school students is conducted by senior public health nursing students at Eastern Kentucky University in collaboration with the Madison County Safety Coalition, Madison County Health Department and local law enforcement.

Madison Southern High School took the first Battle of the Belts title, which comes with a trophy, in 2003. Model Laboratory High School took the crown in 2004, followed by Madison Central High School in 2005 and Model again last year.

“We’re the Susan Lucci of the Battle of the Belts,” Eef Fontanez, Berea Community High School guidance counselor said, referring to the popular soap opera actress who was nominated for an Emmy multiple times before finally winning.

“We’ve worked so long,” said Diane Smith, youth services director at Berea Community School. “We’ve been so close so many times. We were second two years in a row.”

In October, the EKU baccalaureate nursing students completed direct observations of the students at all four high schools by standing in high school parking lots and seeing whether the driver and passengers are wearing seat belts.

After completing intervention programs in the schools, the EKU students completed a second observation in early November to see if the seat-belt usage had increased.

Although Berea Community’s rate decreased from 91 to 89 percent, it was the highest in the county.

Madison Southern increased a school-high 10 percentage points to 83 percent. Model increased by 9 percent to 80 percent while Madison Central increased by 12 percent to 71 percent.

All of the schools except Madison Central exceeded the county and state usage rates.

Madison Southern and Berea Community also surpassed the national average rate of 82 percent.

“We are just so pleased to be in the 80s in three of the schools, and Madison Central did come up significantly,” said Elaine Waters, Eastern Kentucky University nursing professor whose students help with the program. “Of course, we’re always going to aim for 100 percent. But, we’re very excited that we saw the change in seat-belt usage rate that we did.”

“We know still though that more male teens do not wear their seat belts than female students,” she said. “We also know that two-thirds of the people who will killed in Kentucky highways in crashes last year were not wearing their seat belts. We’re very concerned that people begin to receive the message that to either prevent serious injury or death that they need to wear their seat belts.”

Berea Community High School has a safety corps that consists of juniors and seniors who were in the seventh and eighth grades when the group began.

The Kentucky Center for School Safety, based on EKU’s campus, trained the students about how to do a safety audit in the school.

“We had a higher percentage of seat-belt usage in all of our schools,” said Lloyd Jordison, coordinator for the Madison County Safety Coalition. “One of the reasons Berea Community won is their high level of school participation in the project. It wasn’t just us coming in and doing something for them. They got actively involved and had contests in the school.”

Along with making a bulletin board and making announcements over the school’s intercom about seat-belt safety, the school’s safety corps also had a catch phrase contest to find the best way to get the message across about the importance of wearing seat belts.

The winning catch phrase, “Those who drive the safest way, live to drive another day,” was submitted by senior Chelsey Smith.

“We think one of the reasons for our success is that this group has worked all along toward safety issues,” Diane Smith said. “It’s nice to see the work pays off in the long run.”

Bryan Marshall can be reached at bmarshall@richmondregister.com or 624-6691.

        

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