Students and staff will not return to Robb Elementary School in Uvalde after massacre

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Students and staff will not return to Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, after a gunman killed 19 scoolchildren and two teachers on 24 May.

The superintendent of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District announced that school officials are “working through plans on how to serve students on other campuses and will provide that information as soon as it is finalized,” as the community grieves in the wake of last week’s massacre.

“We are heartbroken over the loss of our teachers and students and hold each of their family members close to our hearts,” Hal Harrell said in a statement on 1 June. “We know that our lives will never be the same, but we also know that we will join together to honor the lives we lost and build a stronger Uvalde for those who remain.”

During his visit to the town on Sunday, President Joe Biden offered federal support to demolish the building, according to state Senator Roland Gutierrez. The school is likely to receive a School Emergency Response to Violence grant, or “Project SERV” funding, which is used to help schools “recover from a violent or traumatic event in which the learning environment is disrupted.”

Past recipients include Newtown Public Schools, which oversees Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

That school was demolished and rebuilt after the 2012 massacre.

Following the mass shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999, the campus closed for the remainder of the school year. Most of the school reopened for the following school year, except for a library where most of the violence took place. It was demolished and replaced with a new building called the Hope Memorial Library.

One of the buildings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida remained closed after the 2018 shootings. A new building later replaced the use of temporary classrooms.

On 24 May, 18-year-old Uvalde gunman Salvador Ramos – armed with AR-15 rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition purchased legally in the state days earlier – shot his grandmother in the face before crashing the family’s truck outside the school and entering the building.

Police arrived minutes later, but law enforcement officials now are investigating a critical hourlong gap between their initial arrival and the gunman’s death, and why the incident commander prevented officers from storming the building, even as 911 dispatchers received desperate calls from students inside.

Texas Rangers, the Texas Department of Public Safety and the US Department of Justice, among other law enforcement agencies, are probing the response.

Funerals and memorial services for the two teachers and 19 children – all between the ages of 9 and 11 years old – began this week and will continue through June.