A year after one of their classmates died in a firearms accident, junior high students at Clarksville in northeast Iowa are enrolled in the school’s first hunter safety education program. Superintendent Joel Foster says 15 year old Cain Schild’s death in an accidental shooting last May helped set the curriculum in motion.
"It just seemed like the right time, you know we did have the accident here with the young man and his parents were encouraging everyone to take some sort of firearms safety, so it just seemed like the right time and the right thing to do," said Foster.
Foster is also superintendent for the North Butler school district, which also offered the course. Students use inoperable guns and replica ammunition to learn how to hold and care for firearms. Parents can opt to have their children sit out, but none of the nearly 100 students took that option. The class is part of the phsycial education curriculum and is taught by a naturalist from the Butler County Conservation Board.
