Facility security assessment required

Wyoming School Door Security Requirements

Most states prescribe a process and leave the equipment to you. Wyoming prescribes the equipment: school buildings shall have exterior door locks, a secured vestibule, and lockdown capability. It says nothing about how you operate them.

THE REQUIREMENT

Wyoming Specifies the Hardware, Not the Habit

Wyoming is the inverse of most states. Instead of prescribing an assessment process and leaving the equipment to local choice, it prescribes the equipment. The Uniform Adequacy Standards at 027-3 Wyo. Code R. 3-12, Site Security, state that school buildings shall have exterior door locks, locks on the inside of classroom doors, and door keying systems, alongside a single visitor entry point, a secured vestibule, and lockdown capability. What Wyoming does not do is say anything about how those doors are operated day to day.

The operative words are "School buildings shall have." That is mandatory language about the contents of a building, applied through the School Facilities Commission's adequacy standards when buildings and facility projects are evaluated.

It is a genuinely different instrument from the assessment mandates in most states. Elsewhere the process is the requirement and the equipment is a local choice. In Wyoming the equipment list is the requirement, and what happens to those doors on a Tuesday is a local choice.

What a Wyoming School Building Shall Have

These are the categories in 027-3 Wyo. Code R. § 3-12, quoted as the rule states them. Every one describes something a building contains. None describes something a school does.

Category	What the building shall have	Door-related?
(a) Locking systems and hardware	Locks on the inside of classroom doors; exterior door locks; door keying systems	Yes. This is the door requirement, and it is about the lock existing
(b) Access control features	A single point of entry for visitors; a secured vestibule; main entry control systems; a visitor management system	Partly. It governs the entry point, not the condition of every other door
(c) Communications systems	Two-way communication; mass notification systems	No
(e) Video surveillance	Recording coverage of main entry and other building entrances with front and back views of approach, plus named interior and exterior areas	Adjacent. Cameras watch an entrance; they do not report whether a door is closed
(f) Egress and refuge features	Classroom doors constructed of durable material; the ability to lock down all classrooms, main entrances, the library, and the gymnasium	Yes, for lockdown capability. Capability, not daily state

Category (d) covers site and perimeter features: landscaping, vehicle barricades, a secure site perimeter, marked loading and fire zones, security signage, and site lighting.

SCOPE OF THE RULE

A Building Standard, Not an Operating Standard

What the standard settles

That the hardware is there. A Wyoming school building meeting the adequacy standard has exterior door locks, keying, a secured vestibule, a single visitor entry, and lockdown capability.

Chapter 3 is the Uniform Adequacy Standards, applied by the School Facilities Commission when buildings and facility projects are evaluated.

What it leaves open

Whether the lock is engaged. Section 3-12 prescribes no inspection cadence, no maintenance or testing program, no door-sweep routine, and no duty to keep a given door secured at a given time.

A building can satisfy every item in the section and still have a propped side door at two in the afternoon.

Oversight and Consequences

School buildings are evaluated through the statewide facility adequacy assessment process run by the School Facilities Commission. The adequacy standards are what that evaluation measures against.

No penalty is specified, and no operational enforcement mechanism for keeping exterior doors locked appears in the rule. Adequacy findings drive facility funding and project decisions rather than citations.

Recent Rule Activity

HB0031 in the 2025 session would have required every school district to adopt school safety and security policies. It died without Senate Committee of the Whole consideration.

No door-security mandate passed during the 2026 Budget Session. The adequacy standards remain the operative statement of what a Wyoming school building must have.

AFTER THE BUILDING IS BUILT

A Lock on the Door Is Not a Locked Door

An assessment captures door condition on the day it happens. Continuous monitoring covers the days in between, which is where propped and held-open doors actually occur.

What monitoring adds

Wyoming settles the equipment question in the rule and leaves the operating question open. Monitoring answers the operating question: continuous open-or-closed status on every monitored door, plus a time-stamped event log of when each one was open and for how long.

What monitoring does not prove

A contact sensor proves that a door is closed. It never proves that the door is latched or locked, which is the exact thing 3-12 requires the building to be capable of.

Monitoring is not an adequacy standard and satisfies no part of 027-3 Wyo. Code R. § 3-12.

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

Wyoming School Door Security FAQ

These answers separate the equipment standard, what kind of instrument it is, what it omits, and what the legislature has and has not passed.

Does Wyoming require school exterior doors to be locked?

Wyoming requires school buildings to have exterior door locks, which is not the same as requiring doors to be kept locked. The Uniform Adequacy Standards at 027-3 Wyo. Code R. 3-12 state that school buildings shall have exterior door locks, locks on the inside of classroom doors, and door keying systems. That is a statement about what the building must be equipped with. No Wyoming rule requires exterior doors to remain locked during the school day.

What does 027-3 Wyo. Code R. 3-12 actually require?

Site Security lists the security features a school building must have to meet the adequacy standard. Locking systems and hardware: locks on the inside of classroom doors, exterior door locks, and door keying systems. Access control: a single point of entry for visitors, a secured vestibule, main entry control systems, and a visitor management system. Communications: two-way communication and mass notification. It also covers site and perimeter features, video surveillance at named locations, durable classroom doors, and the ability to lock down all classrooms, main entrances, the library, and the gymnasium.

Is the Wyoming standard an operational rule or a building standard?

A building standard. Chapter 3 is the School Facilities Commission Uniform Adequacy Standards, applied when school buildings and facility projects are evaluated for adequacy. Section 3-12 says what a building shall have. It does not prescribe an inspection cadence, a maintenance or testing program, a door-sweep routine, or any duty to keep a particular door secured at a particular time. Those obligations, if they exist for a given district, come from somewhere else.

Does Wyoming require door monitoring or propped-door alarms?

No. Section 3-12 requires locks, keying, entry control, a visitor management system, two-way communication, mass notification, and video surveillance at named locations. It does not require door position sensors, propped-door alerts, or any continuous reporting of whether a door is open or closed.

Has Wyoming passed a school door security law recently?

No. HB0031 in the 2025 session would have required every district to adopt school safety and security policies, but it died without Senate Committee of the Whole consideration. No door-security mandate passed during the 2026 Budget Session. The adequacy standards remain the operative statement of what a Wyoming school building must have.