Uvalde School District Fails Security Audit
- By Matt Jones
- December 21, 2022
National news reports that the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District in Uvalde, Texas, recently failed a surprise security audit after an undercover inspector posing as a potential intruder gained access to a school cafeteria. District interim superintendent Gary Patterson broke the news to an unsuspecting school board during a meeting on Monday, Dec. 19. The audit came a little over six months after the massacre at Robb Elementary School that left 19 students and two teachers dead.
Patterson said that auditors tested three schools in the district. The inspector entered the building through “an exterior door with a faulty latch near the school’s loading dock,” he said, without identifying the school in question. The audit reports the inspector’s observation that the door wouldn’t latch closed unless the door was slammed. A delivery was in progress at the time, and the inspector was “able to slip in the faulty door as it was left ajar.” The inspector made it to the cafeteria before school staff members stopped and questioned their presence.
The other two schools being audited passed, as all exterior doors were locked. Patterson said that the district is planning a security training in-service day for staff and teachers before school starts in January.
“That is 100 percent my responsibility to see that that doesn’t happen,” said Patterson. “The delivery of goods and to loading docks was, quite frankly, something I overlooked, but I won’t overlook it next time.”
The surprise audits are part of an initiative by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott that was instituted after the Uvalde shooting to test schools’ security. The Texas School Safety Center at Texas State University are conducting the tests statewide and have already completed hundreds, national news reports.