Uvalde District Releases a Fraction of Promised Records

The Uvalde school district has released only a small fraction of the documents it said would be made public regarding the 2022 Robb Elementary School massacre, with district officials in the small Texas town saying this week it was an honest mistake that they were fixing. The mix-up was revealed during an Uvalde school board meeting on Monday, the AP reports, when the attorney for the district said his law firm mistakenly failed to make public all documents as had been promised in a legal settlement. He blamed it on "reasons that are our firm's business, but it is our error."

• Official response: The botched release was another misstep for district leaders who have been criticized for fighting the lawsuit and not making this information public sooner. "We are not in any way trying to hide anything," said Robb Decker, the lawyer.
• The court battle: Earlier this month, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District released more than 3,500 pages following years of litigation that involved media organizations, including the AP. The school district had sought to withhold documents connected to the attack that killed 19 students and two teachers.

• The meeting: School district members on Monday regretted having to again apologize to family members of the victims and the community. The school district's police and other law enforcement agencies have also been heavily scrutinized for their delayed response as terrified students inside a classroom called 911. Family members including Jesse Rizo, the uncle of 9-year-old victim Jackie Cazares and a member of the school board, were among those pushing to see the records. "There's no excuse for that sir," Rizo said. "You can call it a mistake, you can call it an error. It's a costly error, a very costly error."
• The mistake's scale: This week's revelation means that around nine of every 10 records and emails were not released. Board members said about 26,000 more pages of documents and 8,600 more emails would be released. More than 3,400 pages of the withheld documents were released as of Wednesday. Decker said all would be made available to the public by next week.
• The documents: Still, many of the documents released by Wednesday offered few new revelations. Several focused on efforts by the supervisor of Amy Marin to clear her name after she had been wrongly accused by the Texas Department of Public Safety of using a rock to keep open the campus door that was used by the shooter to get inside. Others from the public were critical of the police and Pete Arredondo, the former Uvalde schools police chief who was fired and indicted for his role in the police response. "Why in God's name hasn't Peter Arredondo been fired yet, for stopping the police from entering the room the ACTIVE shooter was in till nearly an hour later?" one person emailed three days after the shooting.