>U.S. fire departments responded to an estimated average of 4,980 structure fires in educational properties in
2011–2015, annually. These fires caused annual averages of one civilian death, 70 civilian injuries, and $70 million
in direct property damage.
Nearly seven in ten of the fires in educational properties (69%) occurred in nursery, elementary, middle, or high
So roughly 25 deaths and 1750 injuries in the last 25 years in the US. I think this is amazingly low considering the 4,980 structure fires in schools per year.
But your point is well taken; there's no particularly great reason to, unless your school is so big and your administration is so goofy that kids are constantly running late. That constraint would be better suited to applying these algorithms to offices, hospitals, military bases, prisons, and maybe shopping malls.
The high school I went to (Alvin H.S. in Alvin, TX) was laid out terribly. It was almost 70 acres, and there were dozens of buildings with classes in them.
We were given 7 minutes between classes, and my freshman year I had to cross the campus multiple times per day (more than 2000 feet each way). That meant pretty much running.
On days when it was raining, and you couldn't cut through the grass, or if you were handicapped and had to stick to the 5 foot wide covered paths, you were guaranteed to be tardy and written up or sent to your office (potentially back across campus).
In the nearly 15 years since I left that school, they have consolidated most of their buildings, and only have about 10.
They could definitely have used some sort of planning algorithm to come up with the optimum scheduling for their students.
