Yesterday I shared a news report on how locked doors impact school security.  The report referenced a study conducted by the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) Center at Texas State University in partnership with the Security Industry Association (SIA).  In today’s post you can access more information on that study.

As a bit of background, in March of 2015, the Sandy Hook Advisory Commission published their final report regarding the active shooter event at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012.  The report includes twelve recommendations, including one related to locked classroom doors:

RECOMMENDATION NO. 1: The SSIC Report includes a standard requiring classroom and other safe-haven areas to have doors that can be locked from the inside. The Commission cannot emphasize enough the importance of this recommendation. The testimony and other evidence presented to the Commission reveals that there has never been an event in which an active shooter breached a locked classroom door. Accordingly, the Commission reiterates its recommendation that all classrooms in K-12 schools should be equipped with locked doors that can be locked from the inside by the classroom teacher or substitute.

In the last 11 years, I have been asked many times where the statement included in Recommendation 1 was still true; whether locked doors had been breached during a school shooting since the report was issued.  Although there have been active-shooter events where the glass in or near the door was breached, I do not know of a situation where the lock itself was defeated.

A recent study looked the role of doors in school security, and SIA has published an article with some of the findings and a link to download the report.  From SIA:

This first-of-its-kind study, The Role of Locked Doors and Access Control in School-Based Active Shooter Events, was drawn from empirical analysis of 54 school-based active shooter incidents occurring between 2000 and 2025, which resulted in 324 total victims. The report examined a wide array of factors—including who the attackers were, how they moved through schools, what types of weapons were used, when attacks were carried out and where doors were locked and unlocked—and conducted deep analysis of the 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and the 2025 shooting at Evergreen High School in Evergreen, Colorado.

This research is recommended reading for anyone involved in physical security for schools.  Locked doors save lives, and that is why the 2027 edition of the International Building Code (IBC) will require doors serving classrooms, offices, and other occupied spaces in educational facilities to be lockable from inside the room.  You can read more about this change and download the new code language here.

You need to login or register to bookmark/favorite this content.