Safety Solutions

Over the summer many of our school buildings are relatively quiet barring renovations, repairs and the "humm" of the buffer waxing the floors to a high shine.  But now the kids and staff are back. 

As a school administrator taking a few minutes to watch how your staff and students flow through the building is critical.  Often we are focused on student behavior or getting to the next classroom to observe a teacher but taking time to just watch is so important.

It is in these brief moments that you see the areas of your building that create "traffic jams" or choke points between classes or how congested hallways interupt the flow of people moving to stairwells or exits.  This is important because it gives you a glimpse of how the building will flow when an evacuation is ordered.  The odds are pretty good that a real crisis that needs a real evacuation will not flow as smoothly as your monthly fire drill.  It is these choke points that you may find it beneficial to assign support staff to help keep things moving or have classrooms use different exit points to reduce congestion. 

Sometimes just sitting back and watching people flow through your building can be far more beneficial than any building plan filled with lots of different arrows and signs.  This is John Baker for safetysolutions4schools.com.

image courtesy of www.massaudobon.org