Accountability may be coming for the failures that allowed a perp to murder 21 people in a Uvalde elementary school — but it may be coming slowly. Overnight, the school district announced without explanation that it had placed Robb Elementary principal Mandy Gutierrez on paid administrative leave, apparently indefinitely:
The Robb Elementary school principal has been placed on administrative leave. pic.twitter.com/s3ey8jlsiP
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) July 26, 2022
The principal of the Texas elementary school where a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers was placed on administrative leave Monday, her attorney said.
Robb Elementary School Principal Mandy Gutierrez was placed on paid administrative leave by Uvalde school Superintendent Hal Harrell, said attorney Ricardo Cedillo of San Antonio in a terse statement to The Associated Press.
Cedillo did not provide any further information on the reason for the move or any other comment.
The Texas legislative committee report offers some very obvious reasons for booting Gutierrez from the job, although the question should be why more aren’t following her out the door. The school district installed locking systems designed to prevent active shooters or any other malevolent outsiders from gaining access to the interior of the school and the children inside. Robb Elementary had already been “hardened,” so to speak, but only theoretically.
In practice, Gutierrez and the entire staff undermined the hardening constantly:
Multiple witnesses reported to the Committee that people at Robb Elementary commonly left doors unlocked—as did people at all the other Uvalde CISD schools as well.78 Teachers would use rocks to prop open exterior doors,79 and they used door stops, wedges, and magnets to prevent interior door locks from latching.80 Due to a key shortage, Robb Elementary School substitute teachers often were instructed to use the “magnet system” to circumvent the locks in violation of school district policy.81
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Why didn’t the school district inspect these schools? Well, they did, but the staff at Robb would actively defeat the purpose of the inspections:
Uvalde CISD Police Officer Adrian Gonzalez testified that when an officer was walking the floors and checking doors, the teachers would notify each other, and they would lock their doors.82 The officers would speak to the teachers and to their supervisors, and they tried to discourage the use of magnets.83 Common responses from teachers would include that they did not have a key (particularly in the case of substitute teachers) and that it was just temporary while a child was using the restroom.84 For some teachers, the inconveniences of keeping up with a key outweighed their perception of the risk of leaving doors unlocked. Other teachers were “rule followers,” always locking their doors.
Note the implied derision of “rule followers” in this instance. The rules were set up for the safety of the children and the staff of the elementary school, and yet the staff found it more convenient to undo those security measures than to keep up with key changes. And it’s not as if the shooter was the only threat this school faced; reports this week showed that the school had to routinely lock down when escaped illegal immigrants running from law enforcement went through Uvalde, too.
That attitude permeated Robb and forced custodians to spend a lot of time as door monitors, emphasis mine:
Considering the district’s policies about keeping doors locked, it was important that doors and locks be properly maintained. The manufacturer discontinued production of the door locks used at Robb Elementary. While the school district had acquired a supply of key blanks at the time the locks were purchased, that supply was gone by May 2022.89
The director of maintenance and operations, Mr. Harrison, testified that people frequently lose, forget, or simply do not want to carry school keys. As a result, the custodians spend a lot of time opening doors. The maintenance and operations department has one employee who specializes in door repairs, but it relies on YouTube instruction videos, online diagrams, and the help of a local locksmith to work on locks. Harrison testified that unless there is a work order notifying his department of a problem, his employees do not regularly check doors.90
According to the report, Gutierrez was well aware of all these issues, but apparently didn’t do anything to correct them. That left Robb Elementary with the worst of situations — lots of money spent on a security regime that no one bothered to keep working. It gave the appearance of “hardening” but none of its benefits. That’s practically begging for trouble, especially in a higher-risk area like Uvalde.
Gutierrez didn’t undo the security all by herself, however. It sounds as though everyone except the adults called “rule followers” participated in undermining security at Robb Elementary, and no one at the school district cared enough to look into it. Gutierrez certainly should be held responsible for this failure, but she shouldn’t be the only one looking at an end to a career in Uvalde’s school system.
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