How safe are schools in Texas?

AUSTIN, Texas – As students return to their classrooms, safety is once again a major topic of discussion not only in Texas, but across the United States.

The Texas Education Agency (TEA) recently released its results from the 2023-2024 Intruder Detection Audits (IDAs).

The audit evaluates safety on campuses across the state to improve current safety practices. Sectors are divided into seven regions: Panhandle, North, East, West, Central, Gulf Coast and South.

This year, 8,383 sites in 1,200 districts were analyzed using three specific categories: Phase 1, 2 and 3.

In Phase 1, at least three external doors of schools will be randomly selected. During this phase, the authorities will appear unannounced and check whether they can gain access.

This year, around 97% of all districts had no results for this phase. For the districts that were granted access, this took around four minutes.

The second phase involves a more detailed check of all external doors to ensure they are locked. The audit found that the majority of campuses (90.5%) had no external issues. This part is carried out with the assistance of a campus attendant.

Finally, phase three applies to schools with individual door locks for classrooms. In the affected districts, samples taken showed about 89% of the doors were locked and 91% were closed.

As for the Central Texas region, the audit found that about 85% of schools had no concerns, while 14.7% expressed some concerns about current safety measures.

Overall, there were no findings at 7,293 of the 8,382 locations, which is around 9.7 percent less than in the previous year, despite a higher number of districts examined.

About 13% of sites reported multiple safety concerns, most of which related to Phase 2.

The IDA procedure was introduced into Texas law after 19 students and two adults were shot at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde in 2022.

Since then, test results have shown an improvement of 9.76%.