RICHMOND, Va. — April Chang will never forget saying goodbye to her son Mitchell when she and her husband left him and his older brother at their swim school in Texas at a date night event in February 2018.
"Every second of it, I do. Every, every look, glance, everything," Chang said.
Twenty minutes into her meal, her phone rang.
"I got a call on my phone, and the gentleman said that he was from the fire department and that I needed to go to the hospital because my son was injured," Chang said. "I'm like, okay, well, what type of injury, and he goes, he, he goes, he wasn't, he wasn't responsive, he, he wasn't responsive when he left to go to the hospital."
Her son died from complications of a near drowning. He was 3 years old.
"When Mitchell drowned, the ratio in this in the pool room was 16 to one. We were told the ratio would be five to one," Chang said.
"There was a class change out, I guess you could say, like he actually drowned right at the end of his swim group, and the last few minutes the new group came in, they were not trained to do a head count."
Mitchell's death devastated his parents and his older brother, who witnessed what happened. But when they learned how unregulated the swim school and swim camp industry is, they decided to take action and push for change — at the very least in Texas.
"We found out this is a very largely unregulated industry, it's one that few left, actually, that has basically like no safety regulations going on out there, which really surprised us, because in the shopping center, where his swim school was, it was the only business that basically had no regulations," Chang said.
Chang has been working to get legislation passed in Texas to set some sort of standards, but it has not yet passed.
"It was not a priority on some of the lawmakers," Chang said.
After the death of 9-year-old King Overton at a swim camp at SwimRVA-North in Henrico County on June 15, CBS 6 asked various state agencies about what type of oversight and regulations exist for swim camps and swim schools in Virginia.
VDOE told us Virginia does not have specific requirements for child-to-adult ratios and swimming instructor certification for summer swim camps. Unless a program that offers swimming is licensed, it does not have to follow any state-mandated ratios or staff qualification standards, according to VDOE.
The Virginia Department of Education said SwimRVA is not licensed.
"When this happens more... wish our story was further. I wish others had heard, so that they more families could be educated to know. I wish that lawmakers, even if it was even national, would take this seriously, because this happens in near drownings. Near drownings happen a whole lot, actually, and it's going to just because the environment, I wish that this would be taken seriously, because our children are everything," Chang said.
Investigators are still working to determine exactly what happened that led King Overton to accidentally drown.
A page on SwimRVA's website showcasing their frequently asked questions about their summer camps does not load. The Wayback Machine, an internet archive, showed their FAQ page from 2021, which indicated they had a staff-to-student ratio at that time of 1 to 10.
Chang believes the ratio should be close to one to four or five. Even so, she says she will never again feel comfortable leaving her child at a swim camp or school without her.
Her message to other parents: stay there and watch them.
"I shouldn't have left Mitchell. I shouldn't have done it. I'm his mommy. I was the last one, and I knew he couldn't swim. Geez, that's so hard to say, but it's the truth," Chang said.
CBS 6 is still trying to get more information from the Virginia Department of Education about why some swim schools and swim camps don't have to be licensed or follow state requirements, and what exactly the state rules are for swim camps and swim schools.
The Virginia Department of Health said new legislation enacted this year that takes effect July 1 will have requirements related to facility staffing and incident response at public aquatic facilities, but those are still being developed.
CBS 6 is committed to sharing community voices on this important topic. Email your thoughts to the CBS 6 Newsroom.
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