Houston High School Athletics is being recognized as a Gold Star Safe School. The State of Tennessee runs a collaborative program between the Tennessee Department of Health and the Vanderbilt Youth Sports Health Center to ensure that student athletes receive the best care. This program is the Safe Stars program, and schools are ranked on three levels: Gold, Silver, and Bronze. For HHS to score as a Gold Star program, the health and safety for our athletes is at the highest level.
This includes several different safety checks, and a few at the most basic include emergency plans, allergy response plans, background checks, severe weather policies, and safeguarding policies. These standards ensure that students are safe as student athletes, but HHS works to keep all of the GMSD community members safe as well. All trainers are also required to have specific annual training for AED/CPR, concussion awareness and protocol, heat illness, and more. For Houston to receive a Gold Star Standard, our athletics program cleared four additional protocols, and most importantly, for all hosted on site games and practices, and AED is available within 3-5 minutes of the site.
Congratulations to HHS for achieving this goal, and for working to keep our community and student athletes safe!
To read more about the Safe Stars program, click here.