Robb Elementary School Principal’s Leave With Pay Lifted, Will Continue to Serve in Role: Lawyer

Investigators search for evidences outside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on May 25, 2022, after an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 students and two teachers. Jae C. Hong/AP Photo

The principal of Robb Elementary School in Texas, Mandy Gutierrez, has been reinstated three days after she was placed on paid administrative, her attorney has said.

“Ms. Gutierrez’s Administrative Leave With Pay has been lifted and she has been fully reinstated to her position, where she will continue to discharge her duties and continue to serve all the families of the UCISD,” her attorney, Ricardo Cedillo, told The Epoch Times in a statement.

Cedillo also sent a copy of a letter from Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District superintendent Hal Harrell, addressed to Gutierrez, which states that she will continue to serve as principal of the school.

In the letter, Harrell thanked Gutierrez for “responding to our request for information by submitting your response to the House Investigative Report.”

That is an apparent reference to a letter that Gutierrez sent on Wednesday to the Texas state House of Representatives committee that is investigating the shooting in which she challenged some of the claims that had been made in their report on the handling of the shooting massacre, CBS reports.

“With mutual agreement, you will continue to serve the District in an administrative capacity,” the letter continues. “Thank you for helping us as we work through this transition.”

Gutierrez has worked in the Uvalde school district for more than 20 years and became principal of the school in 2021.

She was placed on paid administrative leave with pay earlier this week following the Texas lawmaker’s report in which she gave testimony.

‘Regrettable Culture Of Noncompliance’

According to the report, Gutierrez stated that the school administration knew about security issues in the form of a door to one of the classrooms in which the shooting took place that did not lock, prior to the May 24 mass shooting that left 19 children and two adults dead.

The report was highly critical of both the school administration’s and law enforcement’s response to the shooting.

“There was a regrettable culture of noncompliance by school personnel who frequently propped doors open and deliberately circumvented locks,” the report states. “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 her letter to Texas lawmakers on Wednesday, Gutierrez denied the report’s claims that the lock to the classroom where the gunman is believed to have entered did not work, noting that the lock is checked every night by a custodian and that it was locked and checked before the tragedy took place.

Gutierrez also wrote that she was explicitly trained not to use the school’s public address system during shooting situations, noting that “our training emphasized that using the Public Address System could compound the problem in creating a panic situation with students and an alert to the one or more gunman that was present to do maximum harm.”

Lieutenant Mariano Pargas, who was the acting police chief on duty the day of the incident, has also been placed on leave following the report, as has CISD police Chief Pete Arredondo, who was one of the first responders on the scene.

The Epoch Times has contacted Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District for comment.