Assistant Principal of Facilities Robert Farrell has created a new evacuation plan for fire drills.

“Everybody went out towards the back, even Building 2,” he said. “So [people in that building] went all the way down [to the back soccer fields].”

District policy requires two evacuation drills within the first 30 days of school.

“Last year I looked at it, and over the summer, with [Student Resource Officer Chuck] Landmesser’s input as well, we talked about the most efficient and effective way to get students out of the building,” Farrell said.

Farrell explained where everyone will go from now on in the event of a fire or a fire drill.

“We went ahead and changed the evacuation drill to where we have Building 2 and part of Building 3 over along the far east part of the parking lot [in front of the media center],” he said. “Those in the media center would walk over back to the field. It’s also kind of a safety issue as well.”

Ninth-grader Sophia Pietrzak, who was in Annabelle Nery’s geometry honors class when the fire alarms sounded, said her class had no problem adjusting to the new drill.

“It was a lot easier to walk out over here than walking all the way back to the fields,” she said.

Farrell said that he thinks the change is going well.

“We’re very pleased,” he said. “The feedback that I got from the teachers was that it was more efficient, more effective and — bottom line — it got students out of the building within a reasonable amount of time.”