At Berkeley High, about 3,200 students plus staff are required to evacuate to the football field whenever a fire alarm is set off. The process takes at least half an hour, according to teachers, disrupting classroom time. Credit: Ximena Natera for Berkeleyside/Catchlight
False fire alarms at Berkeley High are triggering mandatory evacuations to the football field and cutting into class time on a regular basis, leaving students and teachers frustrated, and administrators searching for answers.
Fourteen alarms, of which 12 were deemed non-emergencies, have gone off at Berkeley High School in the first two months of the school year, according to Berkeley High Principal Juan Raygoza. That’s nearly two fire alarms each week.
“It is impossible to overstate the level of frustration and disgust that BHS staff feel about this,” John Becker, an Arts and Humanities Academy teacher at Berkeley High, told Berkeleyside. “There’s nothing more important than keeping kids in class and providing instruction.”
In an op-ed shared with Berkeleyside, BHS teachers urged the district to find a long-term solution to reduce false alarms. Educators said these incidents cut into instructional time, as 3,200 students plus staff are required to evacuate to the football field, which takes about half an hour “on a good day, when everything is working smoothly.” Class periods are between 40 minutes and an hour.
Becker said fire alarm evacuations are like an unofficial end to the class period. “It takes kids so long to get back,” he said. “You’re losing half the period and having to find the momentum that you had.”
In a message to the broader BHS community on Nov. 11, Raygoza said Berkeley High has been trying to resolve these issues since last year.
“I sincerely apologize for the repeated disruptions, the loss of instructional time, and the mental fatigue these mandatory evacuations have caused,” Raygoza said. “Your ability to teach and our students’ ability to learn are our top priorities, and I fully recognize how these incidents undermine your hard work and focus.”
Raygoza said he’s been in contact with BUSD leadership, the Berkeley Fire Department, and the alarm system provider, Simplex, to “ensure that they understand the full severity of the problem at BHS.” He said the alarm system has been serviced on “multiple occasions” this and last year, and though the servicer assured the school that the problems were fixed, there have been subsequent false alarms.
The tipping point, BHS 9th-grade physics teacher Mat Glaser said, came one day in October when three fire alarms went off, two early in the morning and one later in the school day. He said at least one of his students experienced a panic attack following the alarms.
Raygoza said the frequent disruptions led to BHS temporarily turning the system off entirely during the week of Nov 10 as a “last resort,” at which time the school instituted a “fire watch” with trained staff familiar with the facility patrolling the campus. The alarm system was back online as of Friday, Nov. 14.
“At this point, it is almost a game of whack-a-mole, where a new problem arises after an old issue is fixed,” Raygoza said in his message.
Evacuations due to false alarms disrupt learning, teachers say
The California Fire Code requires schools to immediately evacuate if an alarm sounds, even if the emergency appears to be false or is confined to one building.
Berkeley High’s alarm system problems date back to at least 2021, when students returned to in-person instruction after the pandemic shutdown.
The disruptions were so frequent that a former Berkeley High student created a website that year to track the number of fire alarms that went off every month during class time. In 2021, the alarm sounded 26 times, according to their data. The next year, the number dropped to 18. During the 2023-2024 school year, 24 fire alarms went off, and the number increased to 27 last school year.
Berkeley High educators estimated in their statement that the frequent false alarms since 2021 have equated to a loss of about 8 to 12 hours of class time, or about two full days.
Glaser, who is also a parent to a 10th-grade student at BHS, said he’s noticed that students lately don’t seem “excited” to get out of class for a non-emergency fire alarm.
“It’s gotten to the point where even the kids are kind of dragging when they have to evacuate and go back, because I really do think at the core they just want to stay in class,” he said. “They want to have their access to uninterrupted classes as well.”
Teachers said some students have had a difficult time returning to class after an evacuation, with some neurodivergent students feeling overwhelmed after a disruption and going home. Educators said continuous false alarms can diminish students’ sense of urgency when needing to evacuate in case of an emergency.
“There is no discipline around these all-school evacuations because we’re being evacuated for no reason, and everyone knows it,” Becker said.
According to the student-made website, no fire alarms have gone off at BHS in over two weeks.
Educators urge BHS to upgrade its fire alarm system to reduce triggers from students vaping
According to reporting by the Berkeley High Jacket in 2023, these false alarms can be caused by students smoking or vaping in the bathrooms, students pulling the alarms, and nearby construction.
BHS Vice Principal Harrison Blatt told the Jacket at the time that the school was exploring options to upgrade its system to reduce accidental triggers while remaining responsive to genuine threats.
Raygoza said in his message earlier this month that faulty sensors and calibration issues have impacted Berkeley High’s A Building smoke detector and water sensors in Donahue Gym. These older components of the fire alarm system, he said, are triggering false alarms without the presence of heat, smoke or steam.
“For me, the question is: Why has it taken 4 years and over a hundred non-emergency alarms for facilities to clean and replace primary sensors? If it’s the repair company’s fault, well, why aren’t all schools having this problem?” Becker said.
BUSD did not respond to a request for comment before the Thanksgiving break.
Glaser said he and other teachers have been urging administrators to update the alarm system to use heat detectors instead of smoke alarms to prevent non-emergency incidents, especially those triggered by students vaping in the bathrooms. Smoke alarms are quicker to detect fires, but are more susceptible to triggering due to non-threatening environmental conditions like smoke, steam or dust.
“Does the whole school need to evacuate when kids are vaping in the bathroom?” Becker asked.
Educators said alarms at the beginning of the school year “were predominantly traceable to students vaping … so much so that Principal Raygoza graciously moved his office in front of the bathroom for a while, which indeed stopped the onslaught of alarms,” according to the teacher’s op-ed.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Annual National Youth Tobacco Survey found that about 10% of high school students and just more than 5% of middle school students used tobacco products in 2024. More schools are installing high-tech vape detectors in bathrooms and locker rooms to deter students from vaping and reduce fire alarm triggers, though some have voiced privacy concerns about the surveillance technology.
Raygoza said maintenance will continue “in the coming weeks,” with some of the work potentially happening in areas occupied by students and staff during the school day.
“The work they have completed up to this point does not stop our alarm system from appropriately alerting us if there is misuse, such as smoke detectors triggered by students vaping or non-emergency pulls of stations,” Raygoza said in his message Friday. He said staff will continue to monitor bathrooms and hallways. An update will be provided as more repairs are completed and before the fall break, he said.
“I don’t want this to be normalized as part of Berkeley High culture,” Glaser said. “I really hope that we can get to a point where we realize this is not normal, and hopefully we can get the false alarms down to a reasonable number.”
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