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.

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

At least one intruder detection audit of each school district every year. 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 recurring findings, escalating from extra audits up to a Commissioner-appointed safety conservator.

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. Phases 1, 2, and the weekly exterior door sweep log are aligned to Texas Administrative Code Section 61.1031.

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	At least one intruder detection audit of each school district per year, conducted by School Safety Review Teams established in each region served by an education service center.	Annual, unannounced
TEC Section 37.1083	Establishes the Office of School Safety and Security and its monitoring duties, including District Vulnerability Assessments.	DVA at about 30% of districts annually
TAC Section 61.1031	School Safety Facility Standards, including the weekly exterior door sweep at every instructional facility while instruction is being conducted.	Weekly, logged
TEC Section 37.108	The district safety and security audit of its own facilities, reported to the Texas School Safety Center.	Three-year cycle ending August 31, 2026; report due September 15, 2026

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. Three consecutive years of findings puts a campus in Tier 1 and doubles its audits. Tiers escalate to four audits a year, then eight, and at Tier 4 the Commissioner of Education may appoint a safety conservator to the school system. 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%

still had one or more exterior access points that were not closed, latched, and locked

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 at 9.90% of campuses, while the deeper vulnerability assessment finds them at 36.57%.

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 directly onto the two places findings actually occur. Phase 2a asks whether exterior doors are closed, latched, and locked right now. Phase 2b asks whether you can produce six consecutive weeks of records proving you checked. A wireless sensor on each exterior door answers the first continuously and generates the second automatically, without adding anything to a staff member's morning.

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 access point across every campus, each door showing as open, closed, secured, or in alarm. Phase 2a asks that question about one moment on one morning. This answers it continuously.

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.

PHASE 2B

The log writes itself

Every open, close, alarm, and resolution timestamped and stored automatically, exportable for corrective action documentation, board reporting, insurers, and law enforcement requests. No clipboard, no gaps in the six-week run.

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.

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

That is roughly $430 million statewide, on top of $2.1 billion in school safety grants passed across the 88th and 89th Legislative Sessions. 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. Every eligible campus in the state is audited, and TEA must conduct at least one audit of each school district each year.

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. A campus with findings three school years in a row enters Tier 1 and gets two audits the following year instead of one. Tiers escalate to four audits a year, then eight, and at Tier 4 the Commissioner of Education may appoint a safety conservator to the school system. There is no fine attached to a finding. Escalation is the consequence.

Texas requires an exterior door sweep at every instructional facility at least once each week while instruction is being conducted, confirming that doors are closed, latched, and locked. The requirement sits in Texas Administrative Code Section 61.1031, the School Safety Facility Standards. Districts must document each sweep, and auditors review the most recent six consecutive weeks during Phase 2b. Missing or incomplete logs are their own finding.

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 a district safety program, conducted by TEA on approximately 30% of districts each year under Texas Education Code Section 37.1083. DVA results are shared with the superintendent, and corrective actions are reported back to TEA.

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. That is roughly $430 million statewide, on top of $2.1 billion in school safety grants passed across the 88th and 89th sessions. Exterior door security is an explicitly recurring deficiency in TEA reporting, which makes it a defensible use of the allotment.

Individual campus and district findings are confidential under Texas Government Code Chapter 552. 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.

YOUR NEXT STEP

Your Three-Year Safety and Security Audit Report Is Due September 15, 2026

The three-year cycle closes August 31, 2026. Exterior doors are where two thirds of intruder detection audit findings land, and they are the one deficiency you can close with a control that documents itself.