For young children in South Florida, learning how to swim can be a lifesaving skill.
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A countywide program is helping some of Miami-Dade’s youngest students learn how to be safer in and around the water in an effort to prevent childhood drownings.
Through Zero Drownings Miami-Dade, pre-K and kindergarten students receive free swim and water-safety lessons during the school day. Transportation is also provided, helping remove some of the barriers that can keep families from enrolling their children in formal swim lessons.
“What we strive for is if a child would fall into the water, having the skills to turn around, make it back to the side or the edge of the lake, and being able to lift themselves out,” said Jim O’Connor, chief of the Miami-Dade County Office of Drowning Prevention.
For parents like Claudia Campos, making the lessons available at no cost is an important part of the program.
“This program is amazing in that sense because it gives the students the ability to swim and not have to pay anything out of pocket for the parents,” Campos said.
For Brandy Santos, whose daughter Angela is participating, the opportunity is especially personal.
“Me, I don’t know how to swim. So I am happy that she knows how to swim and she’s learning and they have taught her,” Santos said.
Santos said her daughter now comes home excited to talk about what she learned in the pool.
“Oh, mommy, we did this today. We was kicking. We did the paddle board. We did this. I was floating,” Santos recalled her daughter telling her.
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Other parents say the lessons provide some added peace of mind.
Christine Carrasquillo said her daughter Stephanie is a “little daredevil” who is frequently around a family member’s pool.
“She always wants to jump in and they don’t understand, like, how dangerous it is,” Carrasquillo said. “So I wanted to make sure that she could swim, that she could at least defend herself if she fell into a pool.”
According to the Florida Department of Health, drowning is the leading cause of accidental death for children ages 1 to 14 in Miami-Dade County.
The county says the Zero Drownings program has reached about 4,000 children so far, with a long-term goal of reaching 20,000 children every year.
At Somerset Academy Silver Palms, school leaders hope the lessons will continue reaching new groups of students year after year.
“The goal is in the next 12 years, if we do this to all of the kindergartners and pre-K kids, our entire schools and campuses will have swimmers,” Principal Kerri Ann O’Sullivan said.
O’Sullivan said living in South Florida makes water-safety education especially important.
“The truth is there’s so much water all around Miami-Dade County and in Florida,” she said. “If we have the opportunity in the school site to make something happen and save kids and make this a priority, then that’s what we’re going to do.”
Somerset Academy Silver Palms plans to continue offering the program to incoming pre-K and kindergarten students each year.
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Families can learn more about Zero Drownings Miami-Dade by clicking here.