UPDATE: 72 Houston Schools Fail Safety Test
HOUSTON
Nearly half of Houston Independent School District (HISD) schools have failed an undercover security test conducted by the district, a Houston news station has reported.
Out of the schools that were tested, 72 received a failing grade.
During the investigation, the district officials found that at one middle school, the undercover intruder was able to freely walk around the campus for 30 minutes without being challenged by the eight teachers and staff who walked past him. He was able to walk around the entire campus three times.
In the district, schools are supposed to limit access to the front doors of the school only.
Norman Uhl, manager for the HISD Media Relations department, says the district’s risk management department has been conducting the intruder drills since the 1990s in order to identify problems and correct them before a real intruder walks onto a campus.
“Typically, after the assessment, [the undercover intruders] identify themselves as being with HISD risk management,” Uhl tells Campus Safety. “They share the findings with [the top administrators], and then it’s up to the schools to take that information and make changes to plug holes in security.”
Uhl said the district plans to follow up on schools who have received poor scores from the intruder tests from a central office to see if the errors have been corrected. In the past, the district has allowed the schools to handle fixing security problems.
The current investigation comes 18 years after an angry, mentally disturbed parent walked onto one of HISD’s campuses, Piney Point Elementary, with two guns, four ammo magazines and opened fire, reports ABC 13.
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