The Texas School Safety Center has published its final report on its random intruder detection audits of schools across the state, and almost a quarter of audited campuses need some kind of corrective action.
According to the report, roughly 7,200 campuses were audited, representing 83.5% of all schools in Texas. The audits were conducted between September 2022 and May 2023. As previously reported by The Dallas Express, intruder audits were ordered by Gov. Greg Abbott following the deadly school shooting at Uvalde Elementary School in May 2022.
The final report found that 24.5% of audited campuses were advised to take corrective action by the Texas School Safety Center (TxSSC), however, it noted that almost 90% of those campuses have already addressed the issues identified. Still, auditors managed to gain unauthorized access to about 5% of campuses.
“We have a lot of work to do in making sure school districts don’t become complacent, ensuring that they’re consistently locking those exterior doors because what we did see in the majority of cases is that [that] unauthorized access came from secondary doors,” said TxSSC Director Kathy Martinez-Prather, speaking with KVUE.
Unlocked exterior doors became a serious security issue in the aftermath of Uvalde, as the shooter gained entry to the campus through one, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Since the shooting, a number of school districts across the state began experimenting with new security protocols, deploying new technologies in a bid to better protect students and staff from possible armed attacks.
The question of school safety has been especially pronounced at Dallas ISD, where two gun-related incidents transpired during the 2022-2023 school year. As previously reported by The Dallas Express, a Dallas ISD student was shot in the parking lot outside his North Dallas campus in March — an incident Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde blamed on the prevalence of violent crime in Dallas.
Earlier in the school year, an elementary school student managed to bring a gun onto campus. The firearm was discharged, but luckily no injuries were reported.
Martinez-Prather noted to KVUE that auditing would continue, however, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) will take over the operation.