East Troy High School installs Narcan boxes, combatting fentanyl crisis
EAST TROY, Wis. - When students return to school at East Troy High School on Wednesday, May 29, there will be something new on the wall.
17-year-old Savanna Kawleski is leaving her mark on the high school.
The junior spent months researching overdose aid kits, or OAK Boxes, as part of a class project. But it was a personal mission she helped successfully lobby the school district to put one in her school.
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"Letting them know that doing drugs is not the way," Kawleski said. "The opioid epidemic hits home for me. I have addiction that runs in my family. My mom is an addict."
Savanna Kawleski
Jessica Geschke created the kits. She said there are 285 boxes installed across Waukesha and Walworth counties.
"Just today, I met another mom who was here who lost her child on Mother’s Day," Geschke said. "I cannot continue to hear these stories."
Geschke said East Troy High School is the only public school in the area to put one up.
"Inside the OAK Box, you will find doses of Narcan, breathing masks, fentanyl testing strips," she said.
As soon as the group left the school, they installed another box at the police department.
Erin Rachwal started the Love Logan Foundation after her 19-year-old son died from fentanyl poisoning. Her group will return to East Troy in the fall to help educate students in middle school, high school and their parents about the dangers of opioids.
"So many push back. We often hear, ‘we don’t have a problem here,’" Rachwal said. "The message I would want all those schools to know is yes, you do."
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Rachwal said teaching kids how to reverse an overdose could save their friends or parents from becoming another victim.
"Once you open up this topic, transparently and honestly, it’s so amazing what you hear from these kids," she said. "They’re doing drugs in the bathroom. They are vaping in the bathroom. There are so many kids exposed."
Students and teachers are also being trained on how to administer naloxone.
According to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, since 2014, there have been 148 opioid-related deaths in Walworth County, 552 in Waukesha County and more than 3,000 in Milwaukee County.