Prevention against reaction, the importance of IDAs

On April 24th, 2025 Lubbock ISD Board of Trustees met to discuss their findings within their district wide intruder detection audit.

Intruder Detection Audits (IDAs) were introduced by Gov. Gregg Abbott in the wake of the Uvalde school massacre in 2022. Abbott originally urged both the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and the Texas School Safety Center (TxSSC) to further expand upon their safety measures by implementing routine checks on school campuses in Texas.  

IDAs, according to the TEA, check to see if a school’s campus is easily accessible through exterior doors as well as maintain that exterior doors and classrooms are properly latched and locked.

Fifth-year superintendent, Kathy Rollo, explained how over  90% of Lubbock campuses have been audited and that there has been only one intrusion finding within the district since their last report.

“Shane Anderson does a great job of making sure that the campus is trained,” She said. “And that the issues are all addressed and [the intrusion finding] has been addressed.”

Shane Anderson is the current Director of School Safety and Security for all of Lubbock ISD schools. Rollo did not include details of the intrusion finding for safety reasons.

Founded in 1999 at Texas State University in San Marcos, TX, the TxSSC helps enforce the Texas Education Code (TEC), Section §37.1084, which mandates all school districts to implement a multi-hazard emergency operations plan (EOP).

EOPs essentially detail the importance of schools submitting these audits in an effort to create a plan focused on prevention and recovery in the case of an emergency such as a school shooting.

According to the TxSSC District Audit Report (DAR,) only 40% of school districts across Texas have actively conducted school shooting drills within their initial EOP.

This statistic raises some concern as according to the World Population Review, Texas is ranked at No. 2 for the most school shootings nationwide.

DAR also reported that Texas districts roughly only allot 8.5% of their funds towards mental health and counselors, as well as only 6.4% of funds geared towards behavioral health services.

Rollo emphasized her confidence within LISD’s safety and security team.

“We do our own internal audits on a weekly basis at every campus to ensure that we are doing what we need to do to keep our students and staff safe.”