Uvalde School Principal Has Been Placed On Administrative Leave; Here’s What We Know So Far

Mandy Gutierrez, the principal for Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, has now been placed on administrative leave, according to her attorney.

Gutierrez was handed a suspension, with pay, after a special legislative investigation into the horrific shooting that claimed the lives of 19 students and two teachers at the school, discovered she was aware of security problems at the facility prior to the massacre but had not taken action to address them, according to a report from ABC News.

The principal’s attorney, Ricardo Cedillo, did not provide a reason for the suspension in a statement he gave to the Associated Press.

Officials with the school district have not yet issued a comment concerning Gutierrez’s suspension.

Here are more details from TheBlaze:

A report by the Texas state House found that among numerous “systemic failures,” Robb Elementary School had a recurring problem with maintaining locks and doors. Amid questions regarding whether properly locked doors would have prevented the shooter from entering the building or classrooms, the report found there was a “culture of noncompliance” for locked doors “which turned out to be fatal.”

The door the shooter used to get inside the building wasn’t locked, and the door to one of the classrooms he entered was probably not locked, the report said. Gutierrez and at least two other school employees had known the lock wasn’t working properly, but no work order was ever placed to fix it.

Gutierrez’s suspension follows that of school district police chief Pete Arredondo, who was placed on unpaid administrative leave in June. The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District has recommended that Arredondo be fired.

Arredondo has had to shoulder a lot of the blame for the failed response by the local police to the incident, largely due to the fact that he was the incident commander during the time when the gunman was opening fire on the students in the classroom. However, he failed to follow standard police protocol, which is what ultimately led to the high body count, while officers who were well equipped to enter the classroom waited outside.

It’s important to note that the issues experienced at this particular police department in this specific situation do not, in any way, reflect on law enforcement professionals as a whole. The men and women who serve their communities by putting their lives on the line to deal with crime on a daily basis are typically courageous, self-sacrificing heroes who will give up their own lives to ensure we are safe.

“The district school board met Monday and approved a three-week postponement to the start of the 2022-2023 school year until Sept. 6 so that officials could improve school security and provide emotional and support services to students, ABC News reported,” TheBlaze report said.

Family members of the victims who died in the tragic incident showed up at the school board meeting and complained that district officials are still not responding to things and have not bothered to hold anyone accountable for the failures that helped to facilitate the shooting.

“Brett Cross, whose daughter Uziyah Garcia was murdered in the massacre, told board members that only one of those present had reached out to his family, according to ABC News,” TheBlaze reported.

“You care more about your damn selves than you do for our children,” Cross went on to say, asking that someone on the board step up to the plate and take responsibility for the failures that led to this situation. “Why have y’all still not taken accountability for y’all’s mess-ups? Can any one of y’all look me dead in the eyes and say, ‘Look, we messed up?’”

Luiz Fernandez, a member of the board, confessed that “everybody messed up.”

There are a lot of steps that can be taken to ensure that schools are made safe from this point forward. Narrowing down entrances and exits to one or two in the building, for example. Making it to where a person must be buzzed in if they want to gain access to the building. You can require identification and all sorts of other things to make sure a person with a weapon is not able to get inside the school and harm students.

Let’s hope this tragic incident inspires schools to finally do something productive to prevent another one of these shootings from happening.