Uvalde pupils are enrolling in online classes because they are too scared to return to school

Pupils at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde where a gunman shot dead 19 of their classmates and two teachers in the deadliest US mass shooting for a decade are now enrolling in online classes because they are too scared to return to school for the new year.

The children have told their parents they ‘don’t feel safe’ going back to school, three months after the massacre that has devastated the Texan community.

As a result, many parents in Uvalde have enrolled their children, still traumatized by the sounds of the bullets, in online classes which have been approved by the state while others are considering enrolling them in private schools. 

Tina Quintanilla-Taylor, whose nine-year-old daughter Mehle was supposed to start fourth grade at a new school which is just a mile from Robb Elementary School, has decided to enroll her in online classes instead after her daughter told her: ‘I don’t feel safe’.

Speaking of the children who had attended Robb Elementary School, Quintanilla-Taylor told The New York Times: ‘They are not ready for the new school year. Nobody feels safe going back to school.’

Jimmy Olivarez, whose 10-year-old granddaughter Kendall was shot twice in her left shoulder and back by the gunman but survived after five surgeries, said he is filled with dread at the thought of sending her back to school. 

Olivarez said Kendall is still traumatized by the shooting and has become frightened of thunder. ‘She thinks it is bullets over again,’ he told the newspaper.

He added: ‘She’s not going back to school. She doesn’t feel safe. She is afraid that it is going to happen again.’

Another child, Andrea, 10, has been left traumatized after her brother, Jose, 10, was killed in the mass shooting. She also saw a teacher shot dead before she climbed through a window to safety. 

Andrea has been scared to go back to school, but has decided to do so – and her mother, Cynthia Herrera, has said she can take online classes instead if she feels scared at any point. 

‘I just pray that they learned their lesson and that they will keep our children safe,’ Herrera said about the Uvalde school district. 

In the aftermath of the mass shooting, poor decisions by law enforcement have attracted widespread criticism, but the Uvalde school system is also taking its share of the blame for basic failures – unlocked doors, a spotty alert system and a lax enforcement of rules.

Now, incensed parents and politicians want concrete safety solutions as the attack becomes part of a larger conversation about how to prepare students for emergencies without potentially inflicting an emotional toll with active-shooter drills.

An investigative report released last by the Texas Legislature found the district did not treat maintenance issues like broken doors and locks with urgency. 

For instance, the lock on the door to one of the classrooms where the shooting occurred was known to be faulty, and the House committee concluded the shooter likely entered the room through that unlocked door.

The House committee found ‘a regrettable culture of noncompliance by school personnel who frequently propped doors open and deliberately circumvented locks’ at Robb Elementary. 

The report said school administrators and district police tacitly condoned the behavior, noting that the school suggested the practice ‘for the convenience of substitute teachers and others who lacked their own keys.’ 

At an Uvalde school board meeting last month, parents and families were outraged at the oversights. Jazmin Cazares, whose younger sister Jacklyn was killed, asked what the school district would do to make students feel safe returning.

‘How am I supposed to come back here? I’m a senior. How am I supposed to come back to this school?’ Cazares asked the school board. 

‘How are you going to make sure I don’t have to spend 77 minutes bleeding out on the school floor like my little sister did?’

Mario Jimenez, whose 10-year-old son saw his teacher and son hit by pullets, isn’t impressed by the school district’s plans to fix locks and install cameras. 

He’d like to see the buildings change to key-card access and for the schools to ‘hire actual security — people who will do their job.’

‘I don’t think these kids are going to feel safe going back to school no matter what they do. They’re supposedly protected by the system, and they know the system failed them,’ he said.

He hopes teachers and administrators at schools across the country see what happened in Uvalde and improve security before tragedy strikes again.

‘None of the parents here want to send their kids to school,’ Jimenez said.

Body camera footage from the shooting was released last month by Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin. 

The video documents the apparent confusion Uvalde cops faced on May 24 when Salvador Ramos, 18, entered a classroom inside Robb Elementary School and began firing – killing 19 students and two teachers inside. 

Robb Elementary School Police Chief Peter Arredondo was recorded standing outside the classroom trying to negotiate with Salvador Ramos – rather than engage with the mass shooter, who ultimately never responded to his pleas. 

Arredondo urged the teen to talk to him, trying to assure him that ‘this could be peaceful’ and asking him to ‘please put your firearm down’.

Despite his efforts, another round of gunshots was heard from the classroom.

‘Can you hear me sir?’ Arredondo asked following the shots. ‘Sir, if you can hear me, please put your firearm down, sir. We don’t want anybody else hurt.’

Minutes later a 911 dispatcher alerted police that a student had called, revealing children and teachers were trapped with the gunman.

Six minutes later Arredondo is seen trying to open the door to a nearby classroom with a set of keys, but fails to do so.

He passes the keys off to another officer who does make entry into the room. Additional officers, who are more heavily armored, arrive on scene but little action appears to be taken.

Then, another round of shots are fired, prompting Arredondo yet again to plead with the shooter.

‘Can you hear me sir?’ he asked. ‘Sir, if you can hear me, please put your firearm down, sir. We don’t want anybody else hurt.’

Someone is heard saying ‘I know, I know’ and another officer says: ‘That’s what we’re doing, we’re trying to get him out.’

It was still at least another 30 minutes before police entered the classroom where Ramos had barricaded himself and killed him.

Officers were told that day by Arredondo that the situation had changed from an active shooter situation to one of a barricaded suspect – forcing them to act with more caution even as Ramos continued to fire.

The footage begins with Officer Gazaway standing outside the building at around 12.04pm and slowly entering the building, where several other officers are waiting with their rifles drawn.

Some officers were still waiting outside at the time, chatting by the entrance to the school, while others were chatting in the hallway at the school.

At around 12.08pm, the footage goes dark, only to return moments later to show more cops standing inside the hallway, apparently waiting for orders about what to do.

For the next several minutes, Gazaway seems to pace up and down the hall apparently looking for someone to give him direction, as sergeants can be seen pointing and talking to some of the officers.

There is no sound in the footage, so it is unclear what they were saying.

By around 12.19pm more officers seemed to be gathered in the hallway after some abandoned their post outside.

One man in a blue checkered shirt was even wearing a ballistic vest identifying him as ‘Sheriff.’

Meanwhile, a man with a ‘Texas Ranger’ vest continued to bark orders at the officers, but soon he leaves the building talking on his phone.

Finally at around 12.21pm a swarm of officers could be seen running down the hallway, apparently toward classrooms 111 and 112, where Ramos was firing.

The video ends with Border Patrol agents finally entering the classrooms, where they would fatally shoot Ramos.

The footage was released following the 77-page report by the Texas House of Representatives which holds state and federal cops largely responsible for the Uvalde school massacre.

The House probe marked the most exhaustive attempt so far to determine why it took more than an hour for police and other officers to confront and kill Ramos.

The report blasted ‘system failures and egregious poor decision making’ by nearly all those in power during the attack, noting how 376 law enforcement officers rushed to the school in a chaotic scene marked by a lack of clear leadership and sufficient urgency.

‘Other than the attacker, the Committee did not find any ‘villains’ in the course of its investigation,’ the report stated. ‘Instead, we found systemic failures and egregious poor decision making.’

‘The void of leadership could have contributed to the loss of life as injured victims waited over an hour for help, and the attacker continued to sporadically fire his weapon.’

It also claimed the 149 US Border Patrol agents and 91 state police on the scene should have helped with the ‘unfolding chaos.’

‘There was an overall lackadaisical approach by law enforcement at the scene,’ the report read. ‘For many, that was because they were given and relied upon inaccurate information. For others, they had enough information to know better.’

The bottom line, the report found, is that ‘law enforcement responders failed to adhere to their active shooter training, and they failed to prioritize saving the lives of innocent victims over their own safety.’

Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin said in an emailed statement that the city had placed Lieutenant Mariano Pargas, who was the acting city policy chief on the day of the shooting, on administrative leave.

State police officials have sharply criticized the leadership of Arredondo, the police chief of the school district’s six-man police force, who state police have said was in control of the scene.

But the report noted that hundreds of officers from agencies that were better trained and better equipped than the school police force badly failed, too.

‘Despite an obvious atmosphere of chaos, the ranking officers of other responding agencies did not approach (Arredondo) or anyone else perceived to be in command to point out the lack of and need for a command post, or to offer that specific assistance,’ the report stated.

‘These local officials were not the only ones expected to supply the leadership needed during this tragedy.’

‘Hundreds of responders from numerous law enforcement agencies – many of whom were better trained and better equipped than the school district police – quickly arrived on the scene.’

‘In this crisis, no responder seized the initiative to establish an incident command post,’ the report said.

‘Despite an obvious atmosphere of chaos, the ranking officers of other responding agencies did not approach the Uvalde CISD chief of police or anyone else perceived to be in command to point out the lack of and need for a command post, or to offer that specific assistance.’

The report also found that the Robb Elementary School failed to adhere to a number of basic safety protocols, which included a lack of keys leading to teachers regularly leaving doors unlocked or propping them open.

Door and lock maintenance did not receive adequate attention from the school district, the report noted, pointing out that though the lock in one of the rooms where the shooting took place was known to be unreliable, it was not repaired.

‘In particular the locking mechanism to Room 111 was widely known to be faulty, yet it was not repaired,’ the report said.

‘The problem with locking the door had been reported to school administration, yet no one placed a written work order for a repair.’

Unreliable Wi-Fi in parts of the school also led to a poor use of an app intended to notify the school of a lockdown in the event of an emergency.

Teachers also often responded without urgency to lockdown notifications on the app because they were desensitized by its overuse in situations involving nearby border patrol activity.

Robb Elementary is located about one hour from the US-Mexico border, and teachers would often be notified about illegal migrants who were being pursued by border patrol in the area.

There were 47 ‘lockdown’ events at the school between May and February, 90 percent of which concerned border patrol activity.

Additionally, the report revealed that Ramos provided a number of warning signs that he was dangerous, but that nobody did anything to address them.

In one incident, Ramos sent someone a message on Instagram on April 2 saying ‘Are you still gonna remember me in 50 something days?’

‘Probably not’ the person responded.

‘Hmm alright we’ll see in may,’ Ramos said back.

He was also obsessed with gore and violent sex online, posting videos of suicides and beheadings, and harassing women who he played video games with.

He was also fired from his job at a Whataburger after threatening a female coworker.

Despite his violent behavior, no red flags were raised about Ramos and he was never reported to authorities.