The principal of Robb Elementary School in Uvalde has been reinstated after being suspended with pay Monday over security issues before the May mass shooting.
Mandy Gutierrez has been allowed to return to work and her position has been fully reinstated, her attorney Ricardo Cedillo confirmed to The Daily Beast.
“Vindication is not what she sought,” Cedillo told The Daily Beast.
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“She sought merely to be allowed to continue her efforts to assist in the healing process for the families in the community she loves. She understands and respects that the grieving process might involve anger.
“That is a natural reaction and she respects and empathizes with everything those affected are going through. She prays for the strength to focus on the healing process that will be prolonged and probably never-ending.”
Gutierrez was suspended Monday during a board meeting at the school, but on Thursday she received a letter from the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District superintendent confirming she was allowed to return in “an administrative capacity.”
“Thank you for responding to our request for information by submitting your response to the House Investigative Report. As a result of our review, you will be allowed to return to work on this date (July 28, 2022),” the letter from superintendent Hal Harrell read, per CNN.
“As we discussed today, with mutual agreement, you will continue to serve the District in an administrative capacity. Thank you for helping us as we work through the transition,” Harrell wrote.
The news comes just a day after Gutierrez submitted a letter to the House committee backing herself and the school over its alleged security problems.
In the letter, Gutierrez confirms the door that the gunman is believed to have entered was working and was even checked the night before the shooting by school staff. The door at the time was locked, proving its functionality, she wrote. It was then unlocked the morning of the shooting by one of the teachers “so that he could enter.”
Gutierrez said she followed training protocol on the day not to use the school’s public address system to sound the alert due to the fact it 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.”
She denied that there was a culture of complacency about security at Robb Elementary.
“It is unfair and inaccurate to conclude that I ever [became] complacent on any security issue of Robb Elementary,” Gutierrez said.
“I will live with the horror of these events for the rest of my life. I want to keep my job not only so that I can provide for my family, but so that I can continue to be on the front lines helping children who survived.”
