Recently New Hyde Park Memorial has faced issues regarding alarms and evacuation drills. While these drills are needed to ensure student and staff safety as accidents are bound to happen, issues have arisen regarding the occurrence of false alarms. These situations have caused students and staff to lose the limited amount of time they have in class; however, safety and security measures are being taken to ensure the amount of false alarms no longer occur.
There are several reasons as to why a false alarm may occur. For example, the temperature in the school compared to the temperature outside may cause the fire alarms to go off. Cases where new security systems have malfunctioned are the most common, according to assistant principal Mr. Geritano, who is in charge of safety and security here at NHP.
This is not limited to just fire alarms; malfunctions have occurred regarding lockdown drills as well. During a recent lockdown drill, students mentioned feeling a sense of confusion when a second lockdown drill was announced. Both students and teachers were expected to remain seated in their classrooms until an announcement was made. Many did not expect the second drill as this was not a common occurrence. Due to this, many questioned if it was safe to continue learning after the announcement was made. This fear can be held accountable by the fact that a number of students had learned that announcements may be used as a tactic by possible assailants to get students and staff out of their classrooms and continue with learning.
“After the loudspeaker announced that the lockdown was over, a lot of my classmates were confused because this had never happened before,” junior Emily Houng said.
Incidents like these happen, but whether accidents, drills or emergencies, many students and staff alike find these occurrences to be inconvenient. Teachers have said that their lessons and tests have been interrupted due to these events. While some may not view this as a significant problem due to these events occurring very few times throughout the year, some may argue that the issue must be resolved in order to ensure students are prepared for upcoming tests and exams by using the entirety of their class time.
“During the lockdown it takes a lot of time,” English teacher Mr. Mechanic said. “If one class gets thrown off then it takes time out of all the other classes. The time is lost which changes the entire lesson but when kids come back, depending on age it can be hard to get them back on track. The kids tend to be much wilder after an evacuation to get the class going.”
“Our system is fairly new and so we are working and tweaking it. Things like this will happen; however around 98% of the school did it right and went back to lockdown mode. Every year we have Homeland Security check in to make sure everything’s working properly,” Mr. Geritano said.
