Following the release of a bombshell report on the Uvalde, Texas, elementary school shooting, the principal of the school has been placed on paid leave.
On May 24, Salvador Ramos entered Robb Elementary School while fleeing police. He then shot and killed 19 students and two teachers.
Mandy Gutierrez, the school’s principal, was placed on leave Monday by Uvalde school Superintendent Hal Harrell, her attorney told The Associated Press.
The attorney, Ricardo Cedillo, did not provide any information on why Harrell suspended Gutierrez, who had been working for the district for over 20 years, according to WFAA-TV in Dallas.
According to the 77-page report, which was released on July 17 by a Texas House committee that investigated the shooting, Gutierrez attempted to lockdown the campus early on during the incident.
However, the report found “she had difficulty making the alert because of a bad WiFi signal.”
At that point, Gutierrez could have used the intercom to initiate the lockdown.
Instead, she simply instructed a custodian to “make sure all doors were locked,” WFAA reported.
In addition to these details, the Texas House report detailed “systemic failures and egregiously poor decision-making” and “a regrettable culture of noncompliance by school personnel” that contributed to May 24’s events.
Should the principal be fired?
For example, despite the fact that security policies required the locking of “exterior doors and internal classroom doors” in case of an active shooter situation, the report fund that doors were regularly propped open by school personnel.
“The school’s five-foot tall exterior fence was inadequate to meaningfully impede an intruder,” the report said. “While the school had adopted security policies to lock exterior doors and internal classroom doors, there was a regrettable culture of noncompliance by school personnel who frequently propped doors open and deliberately circumvented locks.
“At a minimum, school administrators and school district police tacitly condoned this behavior as they were aware of these unsafe practices and did not treat them as serious infractions requiring immediate correction.
“In fact, the school actually suggested circumventing the locks as a solution for the convenience of substitute teachers and others who lacked their own keys.”
Gutierrez and other staff were aware that the lock on the door to Room 111, where Ramos perpetrated his killings, was faulty since spring break.
Despite this, the principal had failed to file a work order to have the lock repaired, the report said.
“Locking the exterior and interior doors ultimately may not have been enough to stop the attacker from entering the building and classrooms,” the report said.
“But had school personnel locked the doors as the school’s policy required, that could have slowed his progress for a few precious minutes — long enough to receive alerts, hide children, and lock doors; and long enough to give police more opportunity to engage and stop the attacker before he could massacre 19 students and two teachers.”
