On Monday, April 20, seniors were required to attend a CPR training class during extended advisory. The reason behind this new requirement is Governor Mark Dayton.

In April of 2012, Dayton signed a law that requires all school districts to provide training for cardiopulmonary resuscitation and automated external defibrillator instruction as part of the school curriculum. The previous version of the law encouraged schools to provide training, but the new version makes the training mandatory.

Minnesota joins 23 other states in the U.S. that make it a graduation requirement to participate in the CPR training.

According to the American Heart Association, there were 359,400 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in 2013. Out of that number, there was a staggeringly low 9.5 percent survival rate.

Captain Mark Hillstrom from the Minnetonka Fire Department has been a firefighter for 10 years. Depending on the shift, he says he performs CPR once a month.

“The important thing [for kids to gain] is to have the skills and understanding that if you do something, it is better than nothing, so just do your 100 compressions per minute,” Hillstrom said.