A brand new and worrisome college yr begins Tuesday in Uvalde.
There’s new excessive fencing across the Texas neighborhood’s public college campuses that also is not completed, a heavy police patrol that many households do not belief and no lessons ever once more at Robb Elementary College, three months after a gunman with an AR-15-style rifle killed 19 kids and two lecturers inside two adjoining fourth-grade school rooms.
Ashley Morales is placing her son, Jeremiah, again in school — as a result of she says she has no different alternative as a working single mom. She is going to drop him off exterior Uvalde Elementary on the primary day. She says dad and mom will not be allowed inside.
“I am simply nervous, scared,” stated Morales, whose son was a third-grader final yr at Robb Elementary and misplaced three pals within the Might 24 bloodbath. Throughout a latest “Meet the Instructor” evening, she felt a rush of tension strolling down the varsity corridor.
“Oh my gosh, it is really going to occur,” she stated. “College goes to start out.”
Though college already began weeks in the past in lots of components of Texas, officers pushed again the primary day of sophistication in Uvalde after a summer season of unfathomable heartache, anger and revelations of widespread failures by legislation enforcement who allowed an 18-year-old gunman to fireside contained in the adjoining school rooms for greater than 70 minutes.
Regardless of the additional time, Uvalde college officers stated a number of enhanced safety measures stay incomplete, together with putting in further cameras and new locks.
The Texas Division of Public Security has dedicated to placing almost three dozen state troopers on Uvalde campuses — however that’s of no consolation to some households since there have been greater than 90 state troopers on scene in the course of the assault.
Greater than 100 households in Uvalde signed up for digital college, whereas others pulled their children out of the district and enrolled them in non-public faculties. One trainer who was shot within the stomach and survived, Elsa Avila, is not going to be greetings college students for the primary time in 30 years as a result of she remains to be recovering.
A damning report by a Texas Home committee discovered that just about 400 officers in all rushed to Robb Elementary after the taking pictures however hesitated for greater than hour to confront the shooter. Physique digital camera and surveillance footage confirmed closely armed officers, some holding bulletproof shields, stacked within the hallway however not advancing to the classroom.
Steve McCraw, head of the Texas Division of Public Security, known as the response “an abject failure.”
Final month, the Uvalde college board fired district police Chief Pete Arredondo, who McCraw and the Home report accused of failing to take management of the scene and losing time by searching for a key for a classroom door that was doubtless unlocked. The firing has not quieted calls for for others to face punishment. One different officer — Uvalde Lt. Mariano Pargas, the appearing police chief that day — has been positioned on administrative depart.
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For extra AP protection of the Uvalde college taking pictures: https://apnews.com/hub/uvalde-school-shooting.
