CNN
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Angry residents of the emotionally shattered Texas town of Uvalde confronted the school board Monday night with speakers calling for district police chief Pedro “Pete” Arredondo to be fired and asking what safety measures will be put in place for when schools reopen.
The grief from the May 24 shooting in which 21 people were killed at Robb Elementary was clearly weighing heavily on the attendees and some parents said their children aren’t ready to return to class.
“There is an anxiousness in my heart that is only worsened by the fear my children have,” said Rachel Martinez, a parent of four children. “I think no one person here today can deny there was a massive failure on May 24. Where these failures lie is the question?”
Monday’s meeting of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District board came one day after a Texas House investigative committee released a preliminary report outlining a series of failures by law enforcement agencies in their response to the shooting.
The 77-page “interim report” described “an overall lackadaisical approach” by nearly 400 local, state and federal law enforcement officers who went to the school as the second-deadliest shooting ever at a K-12 school in the United States occurred.
The report comes after finger-pointing from law enforcement agencies, as well as local officials decrying a lack of transparency and victims’ families learning on a piecemeal basis what more could have been done to save their loved ones.
Attendees Monday night were pointing fingers at the board at a meeting that lasted three hours.
Parent Brett Cross asked the board why Arredondo, who is on administrative leave, hasn’t been fired.
“Why the hell does he still have a job with y’all?” he asked. “Are you going to fire him?”
District Superintendent Hal Harrell responded, “We will take the report into consideration. It will be a closed-session decision.”
Harrell said that the board had been waiting for the investigative information to help it make a decision.
Several other speakers also demanded the board terminate Arredondo, who has said he did not consider himself incident commander at the scene, according to the report, echoing comments he made to the Texas Tribune last month.
Tina Quintanilla-Taylor introduced her daughter Mehle, who told the board she was wearing the same dress she wore to school on May 24.
“This was the last dress that all my friends saw me on [sic],” she said. “Most of those kids were my friends … And I don’t want to go to your guys’ school if you don’t have protection.”
Martinez, the parent with four children, asked the board whether it was going to take responsibility for the failures of May 24.
“Are you going to make this right?” she asked.
She wondered what options students and parents would have if they don’t want to go back to school, saying her daughter had said she was “so terrified” about going back to class.
“I can assure you that my children are not mentally prepared to return to campus and my husband and I are unwilling to send them. I speak for my children but I also speak for the rest of the parents in the community who feel the same as I.”
Jazmin Cazares, the sister of shooting victim Jackie Cazares and a high school student, said there was nothing that could be done to bring her sister back but the school board could make changes to prevent other families from losing children. She also questioned how safe she could feel.
“I’m gonna be a senior. How am I supposed to come back to this school? What are you guys going to do to make sure I don’t have to watch my friends die,” she asked. “What are you going to do to make sure I don’t have to wait 77 minutes bleeding out on my classroom floor just like my little sister did?”
Asked whether the district would consider online learning, Harrell said he was under discussion. “We are looking into it. And there are some structures that have to be in place. But yes, we are looking at it and that is one of the things we are considering.”
The school board also has recommended a delay to the start of the school year to address security issues such as door locks.
In June, Harrell announced that no students will ever return to the site of the massacre.
“We’re not going back to that campus,” Harrell said during a special meeting of the board of trustees, and added he expects to have a new address for the school in the “very near future.”
“Our kids, our staff, we’re not going back.”
