Thirteen-year-old Candace Henning has been having trouble with her hearing aids recently. The bright young lady is getting some static and buzzing over the pieces that help her participate in life.

"They are starting to act up," said her mother, Laura Henning. "They run $1,200 a piece, so it's expensive to replace them."

Two Monroe County school teachers helped Candace and two other hearing-impaired students get their aging ear pieces replaced for free as part of the Super Bowl Hearing Mission project put on by the Starkey Hearing Foundation. The Keys kids were among more than 100 children receiving free hearing aids in Miami Beach Tuesday.

"We worked with the Starkey Foundation, (which) contacted us and asked us to look into finding hearing-impaired children in the district," she said. The foundation has given away more than 383,000 hearing devices around the world, according to its Web site.

The Jordan Sparks Foundation, another sponsor of the hearing aid giveaway, gave the kids medical assistance, supplies and counseling -- worth more than $25,000 and at no cost to the families, the Sparks Foundation said.

The students, who attend Sugarloaf, Plantation Key and Key Largo schools, are some of the 20 hearing-impaired youngsters in the school system, said Sharon Day, an assistive technology specialist and deaf education teacher for Monroe County schools.

It was Day and fellow teacher Tess Vergara who got the kids in touch with the foundation.

Day and Vergara didn't learn of the program until late this year; next year they hope to get hearing aids for more students.

"The hearing aids cost upward of $6,000 or $7,000 for a pair, and the costs to the kids is zero," Day said. "Next year we'd like to double the number of kids we help."

Finding the kids to help was just the beginning of the teachers' efforts.

"We had to procure an audiologist to come down from Fort Lauderdale and create molds of their ears so their new devices would fit," Day said. "The audiologist, Christine DeVries, did it free of charge, which was beyond the call of duty."

"It's great, really unbelievable that they're helping us do this," Candace's mother said. "She just turned 14. I can't think of a better present for her than hearing her friends, family and being able to participate in life."

jguerra@keysnews.com