TEXAS SCHOOL COMPLIANCE GUIDE

Texas Intruder Detection Audit: What It Checks and What to Do About a Finding

Every eligible campus in Texas gets an unannounced intruder detection audit each year. Two thirds of all findings come from one place: the exterior door check. This guide covers what inspectors actually do in each phase, what the statewide results show, and exactly what a district owes TEA in the 60 days after a finding.

What the Audit Checks After a Finding: 60 Days

Figures throughout are from TEA's Annual Report 2024-2025: School Safety and Security in Texas, the most recent statewide data available.

The Short Version

What it is

An unannounced, on-site audit of a campus vulnerability to unauthorized entry, run under Texas Education Code Section 37.1084, which requires the review team to notify the district superintendent at least seven days ahead.

Who runs it

School Safety Review Teams housed at the 20 Regional Education Service Centers, using a rubric TEA developed with the Texas School Safety Center.

How often

Every year. School Safety Review Teams audit district campuses annually, and every eligible campus in the state is audited.

What it checks

Three phases: whether an inspector can get in, whether exterior doors are secured, and whether six consecutive weeks of door sweep logs exist. Classroom doors are checked where a district policy exists.

If you have a finding

Corrective action within 60 calendar days, including a board agenda item, mechanical repairs, live staff training, an improvement plan submitted to TEA, and Safety and Security Committee review.

If findings persist

TEA applies a multi-tiered Enhanced Monitoring Plan to campuses with persistent findings, and the Commissioner may assign a conservator to a school system that does not address issues within one year.

WHAT THE AUDIT CHECKS

The Four Things an Inspector Does on Your Campus

Inspectors work from a standardized rubric developed by TEA with the Texas School Safety Center. TEA's 2024-2025 report aligns Phases 1, 2, and the weekly exterior door sweep log with 19 TAC Section 61.1031, which TEA relocated to Section 103.1215 on September 1, 2026. For what the rule itself requires, see Texas school door security requirements.

Phase 1

Access Control

The inspector arrives unannounced and attempts to enter the campus, selecting up to three exterior doors to test. If they get in, they record how long it took, which door they used, and whether anyone approached them before they reached the front office. After Phase 1 they check in at the office, where the inspector also documents which visitor identification methods the campus uses.

Phase 2a

Exterior Door Audit

With a campus escort, the inspector checks every exterior door to confirm each one is closed, latched, and locked. Any door found unlocked, propped open, improperly secured, or broken is documented by location and reason. This is where the majority of all findings in Texas occur.

Phase 2b

Door Sweep Log Review

The inspector reviews the most recent six consecutive weeks of weekly exterior door sweep logs to confirm the checks are actually being conducted. If the logs are unavailable, inaccessible, or show gaps in the six-week run, that is a separate finding requiring its own corrective action.

Phase 3

Classroom Door Audit

Conducted only if the district has a classroom door policy or directive in place. The inspector checks a sample of classroom doors against that policy. Violations are flagged and the superintendent is notified, but no corrective action is required. These findings are informational.

Inspectors also record which visitor identification methods a campus uses when they check in at the front office. That observation does not produce a finding or a flag. It is reference information for the district.

THE LAW BEHIND IT

Which Statute Requires What

Citation	What it requires	Cycle or deadline
TEC Section 37.1084	School Safety Review Teams in each education service center region annually conduct on-site intruder detection audits of district campuses, using a rubric developed with the Texas School Safety Center.	Annual, with notice to the superintendent at least seven days before a scheduled audit
TEC Section 37.1083	Establishes the Office of School Safety and Security and its monitoring duties, including District Vulnerability Assessments.	DVA for each district once every four years, at random (about 30% of districts in 2024-2025)
TAC Section 103.1215 (61.1031 through 8/31/2026)	School safety requirements, including at least weekly inspections during school hours of all exterior doors at instructional facilities.	Weekly, logged
TEC Section 37.108	A safety and security audit of district facilities at least once every three years, with results reported to the board of trustees and the Texas School Safety Center.	Current cycle September 1, 2026 through August 31, 2029. TxSSC has not yet published the reporting window.

Open-enrollment charter schools run on a separate audit cycle, September 1, 2025 through August 31, 2028, with reporting due September 15, 2028.

2024-2025 STATEWIDE RESULTS

What the Numbers Actually Show

TEA audits every eligible campus in the state and publishes deidentified results. Individual district findings remain confidential.

Where findings come from

Phase	Share of all findings	Compliance rate
Phase 2, exterior doors	65.35%	90.10%, the lowest of any phase
Door sweep log review	12.44%	97.74% had six weeks of logs available
Phase 1, access control	11.71%	97.54% could not be entered
Multiple phases combined	10.51%	Phase 1 and 2 (5.81%), Phase 2 and the log (3.50%), Phase 1 and the log (0.65%), all three (0.55%)

65.35% of all findings landed on the exterior door audit, and it is the only phase that did not clear 97%. Exterior doors are the problem.

What the exterior door findings were

Door condition cited	Share of Phase 2a findings
Unlocked exterior door	42.02%
Broken door	35.87%
Propped door	15.02%
Improperly secured	7.09%

When an inspector did get in

Measure	Result
Audits where entry was gained	2.46%
Of those, entry through a secondary entrance	88.67%
Average time to gain entry	3.54 minutes, median 2 minutes
Reached the front office without being stopped	51.23%
Stopped by a campus staff member	38.92%

AFTER A FINDING

The 60-Day Corrective Action Clock

A finding on any campus audit starts a 60 calendar day window. TEA requires all five of the following.

Put it on a board agenda

Submit a copy of the school board meeting agenda summarizing the findings from the intruder detection audit. The finding becomes a public agenda item.

Fix the mechanical problems

Address and correct mechanical deficiencies on the exterior doors identified in the audit. Broken doors accounted for 35.87% of exterior door findings statewide.

Train staff, live

Conduct live training for campus staff and substitutes on securing exterior doors. Not a memo, not a video.

Submit an improvement plan to TEA

Create and implement a safety improvement action plan addressing the audit findings, and submit that plan to the agency.

Review it in committee and keep the minutes

Review the findings at the next Safety and Security Committee meeting and retain the meeting minutes for year-end compliance.

If findings keep recurring: TEA applies a multi-tiered Enhanced Monitoring Plan to campuses with persistent findings, under TEC Sections 37.1083, 37.1084, and 37.1085. TEA says each tier increases school system accountability while also providing technical assistance. Under 19 TAC Section 103.1219, the Commissioner of Education may assign a conservator to a school system that does not address issues identified through TEA monitoring, assessments, or audits within one year. There is no fine attached to an IDA finding. Escalation is the consequence.

WHY THE SAME FINDINGS COME BACK

Nearly Every Campus Already Does the Weekly Sweep

99.28%

of campuses conduct weekly inspections of exterior doors during school hours

36.57%

had one or more exterior access points that were not closed, latched, and locked, or did not close, latch, and lock automatically

Those two numbers come from the same TEA report, drawn from District Vulnerability Assessments. The weekly sweep is close to universal. Exterior doors that do not secure are close to routine.

The gap is not effort, and it is not policy. It is that a weekly check is a sample. It confirms a door was shut at one moment and says nothing about the rest of the week. TEA's own data shows what happens when you look harder: the unannounced audit finds door problems in 9.90% of audits, while the deeper vulnerability assessment finds them at 36.57% of campuses.

TEA also published this, and it is worth reading twice:

24% of audits with a door sweep log finding also had a Phase 2 exterior door finding, compared to just 10% when no door sweep log finding was noted. Better door documentation tracks with fewer door failures. The state is measuring the same relationship you would expect.

Which is why two of the five required corrective actions, live staff training and mechanical repair, address doors that were already being swept weekly by trained staff. Both are necessary. Neither leaves evidence that the door stayed shut on Tuesday afternoon.

CLOSING THE GAP

What a Documentable Corrective Action Looks Like

A corrective action plan is stronger when part of it produces evidence on its own. Training and repairs depend on people continuing to do the right thing after the trainer leaves. A control that reports door status continuously does not.

That maps onto the two places findings actually occur, with one limit. Phase 2a asks whether exterior doors are closed, latched, and locked. Phase 2b asks for six consecutive weeks of weekly sweep records. The inspector's door check and your sweep log both depend on people physically checking doors, because only a hands-on check confirms latch and lock condition. A wireless sensor on each exterior door adds what a weekly check cannot: a continuous record of whether each door was open or closed between sweeps, which a district can attach to its sweep log as supporting evidence.

That is what Positive Proof door monitoring is built to do. It does not replace the weekly sweep, which is required and which checks lock and latch condition a sensor cannot. It covers the days in between.

OUR SOLUTION

What Positive Proof Door Monitoring Does

We put a wireless sensor on every exterior door on your campus. Here is what that covers, and which part of the audit each piece speaks to.

How Positive Proof door monitoring works: wireless sensors on every exterior door reporting continuous status to a live dashboard

PHASE 2A

Live status on every door

A real-time map of every monitored door across every campus, each showing open, closed, or in alarm. Phase 2a checks each exterior door once, on one morning. Door status covers the hours in between. A sensor shows that a door is closed, not that it is latched or locked.

PHASE 2A

Propped, forced, and held-open alerts

The moment a door breaks the rule set for it, the alert goes out. Propped past your threshold, forced, or held open, including nights, weekends, and the hours your intrusion system sits disarmed.

ALONGSIDE PHASE 2B

Every door event, logged

Every open, close, and alarm is logged in one dashboard, where it can be played back for corrective action documentation, board reporting, insurers, and law enforcement requests. It attaches continuous evidence to your existing weekly sweep log. It strengthens the log. It does not replace the state-required human check.

OPERATIONAL FIT

Rules set per door

Each door gets its own alert threshold and its own schedule, by time of day and by calendar day. A delivery bay during morning deliveries and that same door at 9pm are different situations, so they are treated as different situations.

RESPONSE

You choose who gets alerted, door by door

Every door has its own notification list and you decide who is on it. A door at the end of a hall can alert the nearest staff member. A delivery bay can alert facilities and your SRO. Alerts reach them by radio, dispatch, front office, text, or email, with an audible alarm at the door optional on any door you pick.

COVERAGE

Wireless, deployed in under a day

Battery-powered sensors mount to the door frame with no conduit, no cable pull, and no construction. A typical K-12 campus deploys in under a day, which is what makes covering every exterior door realistic instead of aspirational.

Door monitoring integrates with most major access control platforms, and all campuses in a district run from a single dashboard. Integration scope is confirmed during a review rather than promised up front. Weighing it against wiring more doors? See the door monitoring vs access control comparison. Texas requires at least weekly inspections of all exterior doors at instructional facilities, and districts must keep the results for their safety and security audit. See how every state handles school door security.

Not Sure How Your Exterior Doors Would Hold Up?

Schedule an exterior door review with Positive Proof. We walk your exterior door list, identify which openings have no way to report their status, and show what continuous monitoring and automatic logging would look like across your campuses.

Schedule an Exterior Door Review

PAYING FOR IT

The Money Is Already Allotted

House Bill 2 in the 89th Legislature roughly doubled the School Safety Allotment. Exterior door security is a recurring deficiency in TEA's own statewide reporting, which makes it a defensible use of those funds.

School Safety Allotment	Before HB 2	Now
Per student in average daily attendance	$10	$20, scaling to $21.10
Per eligible campus	$15,000	$33,540

TEA puts the school safety funding passed across the 88th and 89th Legislative Sessions at $2.1 billion in school safety grants and increased school safety allotments. More on funding paths in our school safety grants and funding guide.

Common Questions About the Intruder Detection Audit

What district safety teams ask most, answered from TEA's published requirements and statewide results.

An intruder detection audit, or IDA, is an unannounced on-site audit of a Texas school campus to determine whether an intruder could gain unauthorized access. It is required by Texas Education Code Section 37.1084 and conducted by School Safety Review Teams based at the 20 Regional Education Service Centers, using a rubric TEA developed with the Texas School Safety Center. Section 37.1084 also requires the team to notify the district superintendent at least seven days before a scheduled audit. Review teams conduct these audits every year, and every eligible campus in the state is audited.

Phase 1 is access control, where the inspector attempts to enter the campus through up to three exterior doors and records whether anyone stops them. Phase 2 has two parts: Phase 2a, a physical check of every exterior door for closed, latched, and locked condition, and Phase 2b, a review of the most recent six consecutive weeks of door sweep logs. Phase 3 checks a sample of classroom doors, but only where the district has a classroom door policy, and it produces a flag rather than a finding.

The district has 60 calendar days to complete corrective action. That means submitting a board meeting agenda summarizing the findings, correcting mechanical deficiencies on the doors cited, conducting live training for campus staff and substitutes on securing exterior doors, creating a safety improvement action plan and submitting it to TEA, and reviewing the findings at the next Safety and Security Committee meeting while retaining the minutes.

TEA applies a multi-tiered Enhanced Monitoring Plan to campuses with persistent intruder detection audit findings, under Texas Education Code Sections 37.1083, 37.1084, and 37.1085. TEA says each tier increases school system accountability while also providing technical assistance. Under 19 TAC Section 103.1219, in effect since September 1, 2026, the Commissioner of Education may assign a conservator to a school system that does not address issues identified through TEA monitoring, assessments, or audits within one year. There is no fine attached to a finding. Escalation is the consequence.

Texas requires at least weekly inspections, during school hours, of all exterior doors at every instructional facility, to certify that each door is closed, latched, and locked and cannot be opened from the outside without a key. The requirement sits in 19 TAC Section 103.1215, in effect since September 1, 2026, which relocated it from the repealed Section 61.1031. Findings are reported to the district safety and security committee and kept for the district safety and security audit, and auditors review the most recent six consecutive weeks of sweep logs during Phase 2b. Missing or incomplete logs are their own finding. Door sensor data can strengthen that log, but it does not replace the state-required human check.

In the 2024-2025 cycle, 86.83% of campuses had no findings in Phase 1, Phase 2, or the door log review. The 13.17% with findings were concentrated in Phase 2, the exterior door audit, which accounted for 65.35% of all findings. Phase 2 also had the lowest compliance rate of any phase at 90.10%, while every other phase exceeded 97%.

Rarely, and almost always through a side door. In 2024-2025 inspectors could not gain unauthorized entry in 97.54% of audits. In the 2.46% where they did get in, 88.67% of the time it was through a secondary entrance rather than the main door. Average time to gain entry was 3.54 minutes, with a median of 2 minutes, and in 51.23% of those cases the inspector reached the front office without being stopped or approached by anyone.

No. The IDA is an annual, campus-level, unannounced check focused on unauthorized entry. A District Vulnerability Assessment is a much broader review of facility access controls, emergency operations procedures, and other safety requirements, which TEA conducts for each district once every four years on a random basis under Texas Education Code Section 37.1083. The 2024-2025 assessments covered approximately 30% of districts. The report goes to the superintendent and the district safety and security committee, with recommendations and required corrective actions.

Yes. House Bill 2 in the 89th Legislature roughly doubled the School Safety Allotment, from $10 per student in average daily attendance and $15,000 per campus to $20 per ADA and $33,540 per eligible campus, scaling to $21.10 per ADA. Texas Education Code Section 48.160 lists interior and exterior door and window safety and security upgrades among the allowed uses of the allotment, and the TEA 2024-2025 annual report calls for enhanced monitoring of campuses with recurring access control deficiencies.

Intruder detection audit reports are confidential and not subject to disclosure under Texas Government Code Chapter 552, under Texas Education Code Section 37.1084(d). TEA publishes deidentified statewide results in its annual report, and districts must place their findings on a board meeting agenda as part of corrective action, which is how specific districts sometimes become publicly known. No one outside the district can look up your results.

Official Sources

YOUR NEXT STEP

Close Exterior Door Findings Before the Next Audit

A finding starts a 60 calendar day corrective action window, and review teams audit campuses every year. The district safety and security audit cycle now runs September 1, 2026 through August 31, 2029, and the Texas School Safety Center has not yet published its reporting window. Exterior doors are where two thirds of intruder detection audit findings land.