My friend’s sister is going to a school which has an enclosed courtyard and a social room. I have two questions on that front.
First, what is a social room? The room is next to the library. Some people have told me its a smaller cafeteria, but it is no where near the cafeteria.
Second, in the case of the enclosed courtyard, how would that work in a fire drill? Would you go out there and stand there or would you just bypass going to the courtyard completely?
I’m sure the “social room” is just an area they can section off into classrooms in the future when they need to increase capacity of the school!
But seriously, the courtyard should be treated like any other room in the school when you look at life safety. You should have notification devices in the courtyard, the exterior doors of the courtyard should be reversed (panic hardware on the courtyard side of the door), and exit signage directing people inside the building to evacuate. There should also be a sign on the hallway side of the door that says “not an exit”. Actually, the easiest thing to do is lock the doors and keep people out all together. Architects love this stuff, makes the building look pretty. Everyone else sees it as a nightmare!
When I was attending high school, the building was in the process of being completely done over. When the new cafeteria was built, a small courtyard with tables was made. The courtyard had NA’s and was evacuated just like any interior room. There was also a much larger courtyard in the academic area, and I assume it was treated the same, but nobody really ever was in there.