Safety First

The next couple of posts might seem a bit boring, but are for those who are interested in the nuts and bolts of the startup in a new principalship or vice principalship.

Safety stuff:
We are 5 days in, and I'm already a bit antsy about what would happen in the event of an emergency: fire, bomb, lockdown, earthquake, nuclear war...All are highly unlikely, but who wants to be caught unprepared?

It's pretty amazing how much time can be spent getting all of the prep work done for an event that is very unlikely to happen. At least we know that the fire/evacuation drills will make us feel like the preparation has been worth it.

The balance between compromising safety and maintaining a learning environment can be complicated. The wording from our policy handbook: "Paper of all types...are to be removed from all walls and in all corridors and stairwells, except on bulletin boards....to help prevent possible rapid spread of fire."

This is an interesting challenge when one's school (designed in 1996) has cleverly made all wall surfaces a bulletin board style material that can be thumbtacked at any point. Very clever. Very handy. And, apparently, dangerous.

Our building is at 115% capacity, which means that much of our storage space has become office space--even classroom space. Which means hallways and staircase landings have become impromptu storage. Unfortunately, that breaks fire code. Nothing may sit in these areas. So where does all that stuff go?

The beginning of this week is devoted to safety. TM was out yesterday, so I didn't have as much time to devote to it as I would have liked. But, I did manage to walk around to every classroom checking to make sure that there was a clear set of directions for evacuation for that specific classroom, and that there were two papers posted. One, giving directions for a lockdown and the other giving direction for evacuation. The lockdown page is nice and simple, and would come in handy. The evacuation page is in 10 point font and is unlikely to ever be consulted in an emergency--especially since it hangs on the wall. That needs to be updated.

This is an extremely boring post. The job of preparing for evacuation is kind of boring, too. So, I guess that's appropriate.