Robb Elementary School principal Mandy Gutierrez has been reinstated after earlier this week being placed on administrative leave, according to her attorney. Gutierrez was serving her first year as principal when, on May 24, a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at her school in Uvalde, Texas.
“Ms. Gutierrez’s Administrative Leave With Pay has been lifted and she has been fully reinstated to her position, where she will continue to discharge her duties and continue to serve all the families of the UCISD,” her attorney, Ricardo Cedillo told CBS News in a statement.
Cedillo also sent a copy of a letter apparently from Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District superintendent Hal Harrell, addressed to Gutierrez, telling her that she had been reinstated.
In the letter, Harrell thanked Gutierrez for “responding to our request for information by submitting your response to the House Investigative Report,” an apparent reference to a letter Gutierrez sent Wednesday to the committee that is investigating the shooting.
In the letter, Gutierrez pushed back on several claims made in the Texas lawmakers’ report, which was highly critical of both law enforcement and the school administration’s response to the mass shooting.
Gutierrez denied the report’s claims that she knew the lock to one of the classrooms where the shooting took place was faulty and did nothing to fix it. She also denied that a series of previous lockdowns at the school prompted by nearby law enforcement pursuits of undocumented immigrants had led to a culture of “complacency” wherein the lockdowns were not taken seriously. Guttierez in the letter also explained her decision not to announce the school was being placed on lockdown over the public address system, saying that she had been trained explicitly not to do so.