Biennial school safety evaluation

Maryland School Door Security Requirements

Maryland has no locked-door rule and no door sweep. Its instrument is the Safe to Learn Act safety evaluation, a facility review of every public school every 2 years. And the state's own reports keep naming the same physical-security gap: doors and locks.

THE REQUIREMENT

An Evaluation of Every School, Every 2 Years

Maryland requires each local school system to conduct a safety evaluation of every public school, and state regulation sets the cadence: complete a facility safety evaluation for each public school every 2 years, with an aggregated summary of findings submitted to the Maryland Center for School Safety by September 30 every 2 years. The evaluation addresses physical safety concerns, including building security. These provisions do not establish a statewide locked-door requirement, a recurring door inspection, or a door-monitoring hardware mandate.

The statute and the regulation divide the work. Md. Code, Educ. 7-1510 orders each local school system to evaluate every public school it operates, identifying physical safety concerns, including issues with building security, on or before June 15, 2019 and regularly thereafter. COMAR 14.40.06 turns regularly into a number: a facility safety evaluation every 2 years, with an aggregated summary of findings to the Maryland Center for School Safety by September 30 every 2 years.

The evaluation is local work with state oversight. A certified school safety coordinator walks each building, consults with MCSS for guidance, coordinates with the Interagency Commission on School Construction's facility assessment, and reports the findings up. Effective July 1, 2026, Chapters 665 and 666 added accessibility for individuals with disabilities to the evaluation's scope.

What Maryland's Own Reports Say About Its Doors

Two state reports landed a day apart in December 2025, and both point at the same hardware. The evaluation regime is finding the door problems. The cadence that finds them is one walk-through every 2 years.

What was measured	What Maryland found	Source
Common concerns in submitted safety-evaluation summaries	Access control, meaning locks and doors, listed first, alongside cameras, fencing, visitor management, and communication gaps	MCSS 2025 Annual Performance Report, Dec. 2, 2025
Foundational security needs named by local systems	Replacing defective exterior and interior doors or locks, and installing a secured vestibule at the main entrance	HB 782 Interim Report, Dec. 1, 2025, all 24 systems surveyed
Updated school emergency plans reviewed	14 school systems submitted updated plans, representing 1,166 schools	MCSS 2025 Annual Performance Report
Emergency responses to public schools, 2024-25	1,155 emergency responses, including 211 evacuations and 91 lockdowns; 516 threats reported; six incidents where a plan failed in whole or part	MCSS 2025 Annual Performance Report
Weapons-detection systems in use	15 of 24 local systems, 62.5 percent, use nothing beyond handheld metal detectors; the study's final report is due December 1, 2026	HB 782 Interim Report

SCOPE OF THE RULE

Evaluated Every 2 Years, Reported to the Center

What the evaluation covers

The statute reaches physical safety concerns, including issues with building security, and, since July 1, 2026, associated issues of accessibility for individuals with disabilities. The door specifics live in the MCSS evaluation tool that local systems may use: whether entrances and exits are easily monitored, and whether secondary entrance and exit doors are secured in the closed position. Those are scored assessment items an evaluator rates, not separately codified commands.

It is a condition review, not an operational check: it can record that a door and its hardware were sound on evaluation day, and it says nothing about whether that door stood propped open last Tuesday.

What no rule requires

No Maryland statute or regulation requires exterior doors locked during the school day, a recurring door inspection, or door-monitoring hardware. MCSS guidance reserves locked and closely monitored exterior doors for a SECURE emergency status. SB 756, the 2024 bill that would have created statewide physical-security guidelines, died in committee.

Maryland's panic-alert landscape is tracked on the Maryland Alyssa's Law page. This page covers the door rules.

Oversight and Consequences

Compliance runs on reporting. The coordinator submits evaluation summaries to the Maryland Center for School Safety, and the Center aggregates what systems report into its annual performance report to the Governor and General Assembly. There is no unannounced inspection, no independent verifier, and no penalty named in the statute or the regulation.

The consequence that exists is visibility: what a system submits, or does not, becomes part of a public statewide report. In the 2025 reporting year, five systems submitted safety-evaluation summaries, and their common concerns led with locks and doors.

Recent Rule Activity

Chapters 665 and 666 of 2026, effective July 1, 2026, added accessibility for individuals with disabilities to the evaluation's scope and expanded incident reporting. HB 782 of 2025 ordered a weapons-detection study with a final report due December 1, 2026. HB 326 of 2026 requires a statewide anonymous safety-reporting system with local participation by July 1, 2027.

The door-hardware bills went nowhere: SB 756 of 2024 died after its committee hearing, and the 2026 bills to move the school mapping program to the State Police were withdrawn after unfavorable reports.

BETWEEN ONE EVALUATION AND THE NEXT

The Evaluation Finds Defective Doors. The Calendar Gives Them 2 Years.

Maryland's own reporting names doors and locks as the need districts identify most. An evaluation captures each door's condition on the day the coordinator walks the building. Propped and held-open doors happen on the other days, which is exactly where the two-year cycle cannot see.

What monitoring adds

Continuous open-or-closed status with a time-stamped event log gives a school system the layer its biennial evaluation cannot: evidence of which doors opened, when, and for how long, every day between one evaluation and the next, with an alert to staff the moment a door stands open that should not be.

What monitoring does not prove

A contact sensor proves that a door is closed. It never proves that the door is latched or locked.

Monitoring does not perform the 7-1510 evaluation, satisfy the COMAR reporting duty, or replace the certified school safety coordinator. Those duties stay with the school system.

Learn about door monitoring, or return to the school door security guide.

Maryland School Door Security FAQ

These answers separate the biennial evaluation, the reporting duty, what Maryland's own reports found, and the mandates that remain bills or never passed.

Does Maryland require school exterior doors to be locked?

No. Maryland has no statewide rule requiring exterior school doors to stay locked during the school day, and no recurring door sweep. The Maryland Center for School Safety treats locked exterior doors as an emergency posture: its response-protocol guidance reserves exterior doors that are locked and closely monitored for a SECURE status during an outside threat. On an ordinary day, locking practice is a local decision documented through each school system's own safety planning.

What door inspections does Maryland actually require?

The school safety evaluation. Under Md. Code, Educ. 7-1510, the Safe to Learn Act of 2018, each local school system conducts a safety evaluation of every public school under its jurisdiction, and COMAR 14.40.06 sets the clock: complete a facility safety evaluation for each public school every 2 years, and submit an aggregated summary of findings to the Maryland Center for School Safety by September 30 every 2 years. The statute names building security generally. Door and entrance items appear in the MCSS evaluation tool that local systems may use, not in the statute itself.

Who conducts Maryland school safety evaluations, and what happens to the results?

Each local school system's certified school safety coordinator conducts the evaluation, consults with the Maryland Center for School Safety for guidance, and coordinates with the Interagency Commission on School Construction's facility assessment process. The system then submits a summary of completed evaluations to the Center, which reports statewide findings to the Governor and General Assembly. Neither the statute nor the regulation specifies a penalty for missing an evaluation.

What do Maryland's own reports say about school doors?

The MCSS 2025 Annual Performance Report, released December 2, 2025, lists access control, meaning locks and doors, first among the common physical-safety concerns in the school safety evaluation summaries systems submitted. The HB 782 interim report, released December 1, 2025, surveyed all 24 local school systems and named replacing defective exterior and interior doors or locks, and installing a secured vestibule at the main entrance, among the foundational security needs districts identified. The evaluation cycle keeps finding door problems, and it runs once every 2 years.

Is Maryland going to mandate door security hardware?

No mandate exists and none is scheduled. SB 756 of 2024, which would have required statewide physical-security guidelines by July 1, 2025 and a 20 million dollar annual Safe Schools Fund appropriation, died in the Senate Education, Energy, and the Environment Committee after its February 28, 2024 hearing. What has passed is adjacent: a weapons-detection study under HB 782 of 2025 with a final report due December 1, 2026, a statewide anonymous safety-reporting system under HB 326 of 2026, and the 2026 amendment adding accessibility for individuals with disabilities to the safety evaluation. None of them touches door hardware.