A suspected fentanyl overdose has taken not one, but three, lives of Hays County high school students in the last month, a trend that has alarmed school officials and local police.

Hays Consolidated Independent School District, joined by local first responders, unveiled a fentanyl awareness campaign at a news conference on Wednesday morning. Superintendent Eric Wright said he and his school board find even one death to fentanyl to be too many.

“The goal of this press conference today is to let our parents, our aunts, uncles, grandparents, brothers, sisters, teachers, everyone know that this is an urgent matter,” Wright said. “We need to start having these conversations now, as soon as they hear the message you release today.”

Conversations need to start now, Wright said. “It’s not okay to accept and take a pill that hasn’t been prescribed by their doctor or that they haven’t received from a pharmacy,” Wright said. “Don’t even take an aspirin — or what you think is an aspirin — from a fellow classmate because you don’t know where it came from. Let’s protect ourselves and the lives of all our kids.”

Seven people have died from suspected fentanyl overdoses in Kyle in the current calendar year, Police Chief Jeff Barnett said. The last death was an unidentified high school sophomore who passed away from a suspected overdose on Sunday afternoon.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine, making it a major contributor to fatal and non-fatal overdoses in the United States.

Fentanyl is not just a Hays County issue, Wright said. It’s an issue across the state. Statistics show overdose deaths among teens doubled between 2019 and 2020 — which is attributed to fentanyl — even as the number of teens using drugs has remained steady. Often, drug dealers will use the Snapchat or Telegram phone applications, which make messages difficult to trace, Barnett said.

The day a parent — knowing nothing — finds his or her child, dead from an overdose, in a bedroom will to be the worst day of that parent’s life, Jim Swisher of Hays County Emergency Medical Services told reporters. And by the time EMS arrives on scene, it’s often too late to make a difference in that child’s life.

“There’s three kids out there, who have parents and families, who have had their worst day ever,” Swisher said. “There’s no going back, no returning. By the time we arrive on the scene, it is way too late in the game.”

Many drug overdoses leave first responders with little or no information to find the drug dealer, Swisher said. Kids get together. They take the drug. One recognizes the other is having a reaction. At that moment, the friend has to decide whether to dial 911. Sometimes they stay; other times they leave.

“A lot of times they will dial 911, and they’ll leave when we show up,” Swisher said. “There’s no one there, or someone starts pointing, saying, ‘They’re over there.’ And then they will disappear. So, we don’t have any idea what went on beforehand. We’re way late to the game. The damage is done, and we’re doing CPR on a 15-year-old kid, trying to figure out what went on.”

Hays Consolidated has set up a fentanyl education page on the district’s website, along with flyers in both English and Spanish. Jeri Skrocki, who heads up security and safety in the school district, said the goal is to take the fentanyl awareness message directly to the students in the classroom.

The district is working with local law enforcement and first responders to collaborate on ways to combat the crisis. Narcan, which can counteract a drug overdose, is being stocked on all campuses through the school nurses and school resource officers. School leaders also will be working on in-school educational opportunities — assemblies, homeroom discussions and posters — to inform students about the danger of fentanyl.

Hays Consolidated also will film a public safety announcement with subject-matter experts over the next two weeks to raise awareness in the community, Skrocki said. She also stressed that school resource officers are on campus, first and foremost, to assist students.

“That public service announcement will then be shown at our middle and high school levels to really try to get our students to understand the risk, the dangers and the warning signs, and really what they can do if they experience it, what options are available to them,” Skrocki said.