New Location, Design of Robb Elementary School Approved 6 Months After Mass Shooting

A makeshift memorial sits outside Robb Elementary School, the site of a mass shooting on May 24, in Uvalde, Texas, on June 21, 2022. Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times

The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District in Texas has approved the location and design of a new school to replace Robb Elementary, nearly six months after 19 students and two teachers were killed in a mass shooting.

The site selection and conceptual design were approved during a school board meeting on Nov. 16, officials said in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times.

Uvalde CISD Community Advisory Committee presented the designs for the new school—which is reportedly set to cost around $50 million and is being funded by donations—to board members.

According to local reports, the new school will be situated next to Dalton Elementary, an existing pre-K through second-grade school in Uvalde, while Robb Elementary School will be demolished.

It will feature 12 classrooms for each of grades two, three, and four, and will have an 800-student capacity along with an air-conditioned gymnasium, makerspace and STEM labs, science, music, and art classrooms, and a number of play and recreational areas, according to officials.

Officials hope to complete the construction of the new school by October 2024.

“The Uvalde CISD Moving Forward Foundation is honored to begin the next phase of our work to build a new elementary school in the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District,” said Tim Miller, executive director of the Uvalde CISD Moving Forward Foundation, in a statement.

New Interim Police Chief

The Uvalde CISD Moving Forward Foundation was established in the wake of the shooting at Robb Elementary to collect funding for the construction of a new school.

“With this evening’s approval of the site and conceptual design by the UCISD school board, we now move to the schematic design phase of the project,” Miller added.

Students, campus staff, district departments, law enforcement, and emergency responders all helped in the design process of the new school, along with Huckabee Architects, Inc., a Fort Worth-based architecture firm that has pledged to help design the new education facility free of charge.

Elsewhere on Wednesday, the district also voted to hire new interim Police Chief Josh Gutierrez, replacing Pete Arredondo, who faced intense criticism over his response to the shooting massacre and was ultimately fired in August.

One board member, J.J. Suarez, abstained from voting on Wednesday, San Antonio Express-News reports. The rest of the board voted to approve Gutierrez’s hiring.

In October, Hal Harrell, superintendent of UCISD, also officially retired after the Uvalde school board unanimously voted to accept his decision to step down.

Harrell, a 30-year employee of the school district, was one of many who had faced criticism over the handling of the mass shooting, particularly after a 77-page report published on July 17 by the Texas state House of Representatives found that there were multiple “shortcomings and failures” across the board by both law enforcement and UCISD in its response.

Prior to Harrell’s retirement, the entire school district’s police department was also suspended after “additional concerns with department operations” were uncovered.