District drafts new concussion practices

On June 19, at its last meeting of the school year, the Oceanside Board of Education adopted a new policy to help protect student athletes who suffer concussions while playing.

The Concussion Management Policy was created out of necessity, as one of the requirements for the Concussion Management and Awareness Act passed by New York State, which was passed last June and goes into effect on July 1, 2012. The law states that school districts need to have codified policies to remove students from athletic activities if they suffer concussions, and have a system to phase them back in.

“A head injury is serious business,” said Jeff Risener, the district’s director of physical education, health and interscholastic athletics. “So we have to take every precaution to help student athletes be well.”

There are four main components to the district’s new concussion policy. The first is training staff to recognize the symptoms of a concussion. Physical education teachers, nurses, coaches and trainers will all be taught to recognize the signs of a concussion. If they see any child exhibiting the symptoms of a concussion, they will be removed from play and examined by a health care professional.

Part two of the policy gets the parents involved. “The second part of the policy would be that there would be concussion awareness information included in all permission slips that are going home to parents and also on the school website,” Risener said. “Because so many kids play outside of school.”

If a student suffers a concussion when not participating in school-sponsored activity, it’s the responsibility of the parents to notify the school so that the condition can be appropriately managed.

When a student suffers a concussion, they will be removed from sports and activities until they are symptom-free for a period of 24 hours. After that, a doctor has to recommend them to be put back in — which is, more or less, what the district was already doing.

After a doctor’s approval, the student will be put into Return to Play, where they will be slowly phased back in to the sport. The exact Return to Play policy is still being decided.

“[A concussion] could happen anywhere,” Risener said. “If you’re on the playing field and your competing, if a kid falls down and hits his head on the ground. It could happen. So this is all good stuff.”