“I think evacuation drills are really important because even though we may never have to actually do this, we need to prepare,” Mrs. Marko, a teacher at Dakota said.

Schools have these drills to help prepare and have an orderly and safe exit from the school in an emergency situation. But did the drill actually go well and was it useful to the student body and faculty?

“I made the mistake of walking out of the building without a roster, and I realize how prepared we really are because we each have partners who have duplicate class information just for that type of mishap,” Marko said. “It is important to account for every student so that nobody is left in the building in danger, and so the school knows where everybody is at all times.”

A student perspective might be a little different. “We get lost constantly, no one knows where the seminar teacher is. It’s a hot mess,” Siarra Garza (10) said.

While some students and teachers were unaware of the drill, other students knew about it and looked toward it with dread. “Like most drills, information immediately leaks out,” Garza said, “Even with the idea of ‘don’t leak the information’ it still leaks, which completely takes away the idea of a real situation.”

The drills are important and clearly prepare us for a real situation. But, students don’t take it too seriously, which can lead to real problems in real emergency situations.