Everybody who has been in this district for a significant time is familiar with the blare of the fire alarms. They are often viewed with a sense of annoyance for their unnecessary repetition of common practice, and when the safety drills intrude on time that students consider theirs, such as lunch, grumbling goes on the rise.

There are no state laws mandating how often districts must practice their drills, only that they “shall adopt and implement a multi-hazard emergency operations plan for use in district schools.” This means that the only things binding how the district conducts its drills are district and local ordinances, meaning that the district could, conceivably, work to practice in different ways than it currently does.

However, because the top priority of the school system is to protect its students, the district is bound by principle to make sure that drills work toward the intended purpose of making sure that all students, whether they have been in-district for ten years or started five minutes ago, know what to do in the case of an emergency.

The primary reason that drills must continue at a frequency that provides regular practice is, ironically, exactly a reason why some students hate drills: the drills must happen enough to where emergency procedure is second-nature to everybody in the district. Rather than a sign that drills are unnecessary, the fact that drills often seem second-nature signifies that the drills are fulfilling their purpose. In order to effectively protect the people within the district, drills must take place enough to where everyone automatically knows what to do and where to go to be safe, whether it is a fire drill or a lockdown drill.

Also, drills perform the critical function of educating new students about safety procedures so that they can have the second-nature safety response that other students have. By practicing drills with a frequency, new students who may come from districts that don’t practice drills will have opportunities to learn what to do for safety procedure.

The timing of the drills also provides a key factor as well, for being prepared requires knowing what to do at any time, including passing periods or lunch. Emergency doesn’t wait for a convenient time, so by practicing at multiple times, the district both gains preparation at new times and wastes less class time.

Drills can get repetitive, but that is a signal that they are fulfilling their purposes of keeping a system of safety ready. In order to make sure that everybody is prepared if a disaster were to strike, drills must continue often enough to provide practice.