Honestly, it varies. In elementary school (from about grades 1 through 5), we had five fire drills per year, as required by the state of Minnesota, and boy was our principal consistent! The first drill was ALWAYS the third day of school, the second was ALWAYS exactly six school days after the first, the third was ALWAYS the first week of November, the fourth (if there weren’t any false alarms during the winter that we could substitute for this drill) was the first week of March, and the fifth was ALWAYS (with one exception) the second to last week of school.
In sixth and seventh grade, we had a pretty bad principal. I think we might’ve had four fire drills total those two years.
Eighth grade (these are all from the same school, I might add), we had a substantially better principal, and we were back to five a year (four drills/one false alarm).
High school is just as unique. So far, we’ve had three fire drills, but in the past that’s how many we’ve had in an entire year. We have a new principal this year, so I really don’t know how things are gonna turn out. I’d assume we’ll have at least one in the springtime though, because of the spacing of the first drills.
Texas law requires one per month (but two drills within the first two weeks of school), but Oklahoma requires two fire drills, tornado drills, or lockdown drills per semester. I’m not sure if they pick and choose which ones to conduct, because I never went to an Oklahoma high school. I’ve never been in a drill that wasn’t in the dorms here at OSU.
I can again say that a dorm on campus, with numerous false alarms PER WEEK (not exaggerating) has System Sensor SpectrAlert Advances in EACH sleeping room. Set to 15 CD on the strobe, and HIGH CONTINUOUS volume!
In Florida, we are required to have fire drills once per month with two drills during the first 2 weeks of school, and tornado drills twice per year. Volusia County (which is the district where I attended public school) requires one lockdown drill (Code Red), one bomb threat drill (Code Blue), and one Haz-Mat/Shelter in Place drill (Code Yellow) per year.
In my junior and senior years of high school we only did one of the TWO REQUIRED tornado drills.
We had a lockdown because someone was threatening to shoot up the school via snapchat.
Despite them saying there was a level one lockdown (meaning there was a threat outside of the school and we aren’t supposed to go outside or hallways), we decided to get low in the trailer and turn off the lights since we knew the situation, though rare, could evolve very quickly into something more dangerous and the trailer walls would not have protected us at all. The only information we knew at the time was that someone was threatening to start shooting in the building so we didn’t want to take the risks.
We had to stay in the classroom for the entire rest of the day before we were officially dismissed.
We had somebody threaten to shoot our school today too. What really irks me is that administration totally downplayed it even though it was a very serious threat, and as far as I’m aware the person would have done it if they hadn’t been stopped.
Well, usually we hear 3 pules of a whistle and get punished. We thought it was that, but we realized it was the fire alarm. We celebrated because of the alarm. We stayed out for 10 minutes.
I’ve aught to add. Not my school, but another high school (If you want to know the alarms, it’s -9219 horn/strobes & 2099 pulls w/ a few spectralerts & truealerts) had THREE snapchats of kids holding a gun, one I quote saying “M________ ain’t ready for this”. Apparently they’ve had two lockdowns since Marjory Stoneman Douglas.
We had a “mini” lockdown on Wednesday due to a shooting threat for Cochrane and Calgary, which was posted on Facebook. We just didn’t leave the school, the vice principal was always standing at the front door.
So a few days ago the fire dept. came in after school and tested the fire alarms. Fortunately, I remembered to record a small segment so here it is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIypX1ab2tE
Anyway, the main alarms are Siemens U-MMT’s, with Siemens re-branded Wheelock As’s scattered about. It’s quite loud and they make me jump out of my seat whenever we have a fire drill. Everything is torn out because the school is being renovated, and in the new areas they are installing Truealert ES speaker strobes. Its kind of odd because my high school currently has a Siemens system that is converting over to Simplex, but the other high school in my district has a Simplex system being converted to Siemens… I don’t know what panel, but they have Siemens re-branded Wheelock E-50’s for NA’s.
Are any of your schools announcing drills before they start? That’s a new policy that we’re going to have implemented for intruder and tornado drills; not sure about fires.
Are any of your schools announcing drills before they start?
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My elementary schools and my middle school sometimes announced fire drills beforehand (usually this would be the case with the first two drills for the year or if we had new routes), but my middle and high school emailed teachers before we had drills.
Are any of your schools announcing drills before they start? That’s a new policy that we’re going to have implemented for intruder and tornado drills; not sure about fires.
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My school district has a ban on this with big consequences for anyone who does. I am no longer allowed to know when we’re having fire drills too, they fear it will get leaked and someone will know when the students are outside of the building.