The Uvalde teacher described how she shielded her students from bullets when a gunman entered Robb on May 24, 2022.
SAN ANTONIO — A trove of newly released records by Uvalde CISD sheds some new light into the days and weeks before the 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School, as well as the aftermath.
Among those documents is an email sent to then-Superintendent Hal Harrell by a Robb teacher who said she felt that staff at the elementary school at the heart of the tragedy were “being ignored” after the shooting on May 24, 2022.
“The last few weeks have been the hardest of my life, but the district that I love so much, that I gave so much to, hasn’t even reached out,” wrote the teacher, who emailed Harrell on the afternoon of June 12 with the subject line “Please Read This. Together We Rise.”
The teacher, who wrote she had been with Uvalde CISD for four years at the time, gave a detailed account of her actions the morning of the gunfire.
She wrote about how she was taking her students to recess when the first shots rang out, saying she took action to bring her students back into the classroom while warning the class next door “to hide and get quiet.” She recounted to Harrell that shots came through her classroom’s window as she was closing the door, at which point she says she took action to protect her fourth graders.
“I told my students I loved them, I told them to stay quiet, and I told them to pray,” the teacher wrote. “I physically sat almost laying myself on my students and in front of them to be sure I could block them from bullets.”
“I knew I would die that day,” she went on to write, adding she was bleeding from her back from broken glass. “But I tried to stay calm for my students. I knew I had to stay calm when he came into my classroom. I needed my students to hear they were loved in case it was the last thing they ever heard.”
Nineteen students and two teachers were killed by the gunman at Robb. Among the records released Monday night was disciplinary information for the shooter, a Uvalde High School student, showing he had behavioral issues with other kids, had failed state tests, and had numerous absences and occasions of missed schoolwork.
The teacher expressed worry that she was jeopardizing her job by emailing Harrell. But she wrote she felt that Uvalde CISD could have done more to communicate directly with staff about what was next as they were being assigned to other campuses.
“My friends and students I loved gave their lives for this district,” she wrote. “It feels like our sacrifice and pain doesn’t matter. I love my job… but I feel like our opinions need to be taken into consideration. We are adjusting to a new way of life riddled with anxiety, fear, grief and pain… Our Robb team needs each other. We are the only people that understand what we are going through. From the bottom of my heart I hope you take this into consideration.”
In the weeks and months since the Robb shooting, the vacant school is still standing but no longer servicing students. The 2025-26 school year is seeing the first cohort of pupils at Legacy Elementary School, the new Uvalde facility built to replace Robb while paying homage to the victims. And while no one has yet to be held criminally accountable for what has been considered a failed law enforcement response, then-Uvalde CISD Police Chief Pete Arredondo has been charged, as has a former district officer under his command.
The teacher who emailed Harrell is still with the district. He, meanwhile, retired from Uvalde CISD four months later, in October 2022.