Why Jarod’s Law?
Our drive and determination to pursue safer schools for Ohio children
is driven by our belief that Jarod’s death was completely preventable.
Information and facts about the dangers of mobile folding tables is well
documented and published. The table which killed Jarod had two large
warning decals affixed to the table surface. However children continue
to be severely injured or killed by mobile folding tables. Therefore
effective awareness, education, and remediation are not occurring.
The Federal Government’s Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC)
has been attempting to raise awareness for the past 10 years of the
dangers of this table design. The
CSPC website state these tables can "tip-over and seriously injure
or kill a child" and that the “CPSC has reports of several deaths and
injuries”. The CPSC website also provides suggestions for safer handling
procedures to help prevent injuries.
Mobile folding tables have also caught the attention of national
testing organizations such as Underwriters Laboratories (UL), who have
developed specific tip-over testing standards (UL 2040) for testing the
stability of folding rollaway tables. Underwriters Laboratories
standards specify a minimum tip over pressure of 56lbs. The 290lb table
which killed Jarod topples with only 27 lbs of tip over pressure, and a
falls like a tree with a killing force of over 8 tons, no match for
Jarod’s 40 lb body.
As we began to learn more, we started to ask ourselves, “Who is
responsible for school (K-12) safety?” and “Why isn’t someone taking
action to remediate these known dangers?”. To our surprise, we
discovered nobody claims to be accountable for the role of general
safety inspections in the state of Ohio, not the schools, not the
administrators, not the teachers, nor any state organization.
In our tragedy, the danger of the folding cafeteria table had been
made available for over 10 years, but nobody took action to identify and
remediate the danger in Jarod’s school. Does your child’s cafeteria have
Killer Cafeteria Tables? Is
your child safe in school?
In response, we began working with House Representative
Tom Raga, and
other legal professionals, to identify a way to create changes which
help better protect Ohio school children; the result was Jarod’s Law
(HB203).
Jarod’s Law includes several key elements as summarized below:
-
Creation of the School
Health and Safety Network
-
Annual school inspections
for unsafe health, safety, and sanitation conditions by the
Ohio State
Board of Health
-
Publicly available
published inspection reports for each school
-
Mandatory written plans,
including timeframes, for remediation of each item identified as not
within compliance by the inspection.
-
Review of school’s
remediation plans, by the Boards of Health to ensure proper
compliance
-
Auditing and review by
State of
Ohio Auditor’s office to ensure overall integrity of School
Health and Safety Network program.
For more details on Jarod's
Law, refer to the Jarod's Law Summary button above