Maria Montessori Charter Academy continues as First K-8 School
in U.S. to be Certified for Teen CERT Disaster Response
Mock Disaster Scheduled for November 10th at 8:30am
ROCKLIN, CA Seventh and Eighth grade students at
Maria Montessori Charter Academy will be training
three hours per day every Friday for the next two months
to respond to natural disasters and other emergencies in
their school.
The Teen Community Emergency Response Team (Teen CERT)
educates students in disaster preparedness for
hazards that could affect their school and trains them
in basic response skills including fire safety, light
search and rescue, team organization, triage and first
aid.
CERT students learn how to be first responders at a
school disaster scene, and then transfer command over to
better-trained authorities when they arrive. The program
culminates in a student exercise of a mock disaster on
Wednesday, November 11th, from 8:30 AM to 10:30 AM.
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The CERT program was developed in 1985 by the Los
Angeles City Fire Department to develop trained
volunteer response teams to improve survival in
disasters until professional assistance arrives.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency made the
program nationwide in 1994 and in 2004 the CERT
program became a part of the Department of Homeland
Security. CERT is a primary program of the federal
Citizen Corps project.
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Maria Montessori Charter Academy was the first K-8
elementary school in the United States to pilot the
program in the 2008-2009 school year. The Teen CERT program is typically run in
high schools and some ninth grade middle school
programs. There are several high schools in
Sacramento County currently running the Teen CERT
program and MMCA is the first and only school to run the
program in Placer County. Maria Montessori Charter
Academy made headlines last Fall as the first
start-up charter school in California to have a
state financed facility completed on its behalf.
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If you would like more information about this topic,
would like to photograph/video the mock disaster, or to
schedule an interview with Laura Crouch, please call
916-630-1510 or e-mail Laura at
lcrouch@mmcharter.org |
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For more
information about Teen CERT, please go to:
www.sacramentoregioncitizencorpscouncil.org/teen_cert.htm
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