Uvalde Mayor Vows Robb Elementary Will Be Bulldozed: ‘I Would Never Ask’ a Child to Walk Through Those Doors Again
Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images.
Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin (R) is vowing that Robb Elementary School will be bulldozed rather than force children to return to the scene where 19 of their fellow students and two teachers were killed in a mass shooting last month, and he has the support of other local, state, and federal officials.
“I don’t think anybody’s plans are but to tear that building down,” McLaughlin told Dallas-Fort Worth NBC affiliate KXAS-TV. “I would never ask, expect a child to ever have to walk in those doors ever, ever again. That building needs to be gone.”
McLaughlin acknowledged that the memorial displays in front of the school included messages of condolences from all over the world were “moving,” but felt it would be too traumatic to force children back into a building where their friends and teachers had been killed.
A statement from the Uvalde Independent School District provided to CNN correspondent Shimon Prokupecz on Wednesday stated that students and staff would not be returning to the Robb Elementary campus, and the district was “working through plans on how to serve students on other campuses.”
Texas State Sen. Roland Guttierez (D), whose district includes Uvalde, voiced similar sentiments in an interview with San Antonio ABC affiliate KSAT News, saying that he had spoken to President Joe Biden during his visit to Uvalde and the president had told him that the federal government was “going to look to raze that school and build a new one.”
Guttierez added that he would be moving his district office from Eagle Pass to Uvalde for the next two years to continue to assist the community in the wake of the deadly shooting.
Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) tweeted that Uvalde families had shared with him “how worried they are about children going back to Robb Elementary,” agreeing with local officials that “[n]o child should have to return to the scene of this tragedy.” Castro also pledged to work with local, state, and federal leaders to get Uvalde “any money it needs to build a new school.”
When I met with Uvalde families, they told me how worried they are about children going back to Robb Elementary.
No child should have to return to the scene of this tragedy. Along w/state, local & federal leaders, I’ll work to get Uvalde any money it needs to build a new school. pic.twitter.com/KADJbaHQnI
— Joaquin Castro (@JoaquinCastrotx) May 29, 2022
The Dallas Morning News included in its report how other school campuses were demolished or renovated in the wake of other school shootings.
After 20 children and six adults were killed in 2012, Sandy Hook Elementary was completely razed and rebuilt, including “enhanced safety measures including locks on every door and window and key-card access points” and “‘naturalistic’ designs intended to calm fears and anxieties from teachers and students there.”
Santa Fe Independent School District opted for $1 million in security enhancements for the school and renovations in the area where a 2018 shooting killed 10 people at a Santa Fe High School, just outside Houston.
The 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. that killed 17 students and teachers was unique in that the shooter survived, so the building where the shooting occurred had to be preserved as a crime scene. The Florida Legislature designated $18 million for the school district to build a new building, which opened in fall 2019.
