Arredondo, who has been on leave from the district since June 22, has faced blistering criticism since the May 24 massacre, most notably for not ordering officers to immediately breach the classroom where an 18-year-old gunman carried out the attack. Colonel Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, has said Arredondo was in charge of the law enforcement response to the attack.

Damning report lays bare failings of police at Texas school shooting

Texas state lawmakers also slammed Arredondo in a report last month, saying he “did not assume his preassigned responsibility of incident command” and made analytical errors because he did not have all the necessary information.

The lawmakers said the situation was “chaotic” due to the 376 on-scene officers’ “lackadaisical approach” to subduing the gunman.

They said no other officers offered to help or replace Arredondo during the massacre.

Seventy-three minutes elapsed between the first officers’ arrival and the shooter’s death, an “unacceptably long period of time.”

“The void of leadership could have contributed to the loss of life,” the report said.

“It is plausible that some victims could have survived if they had not had to wait 73 additional minutes for rescue,” according to the report.

Following the release of the Texas lawmakers’ report, local media reported that Uvalde police lieutenant Mariano Pargas had been suspended while the city investigated his role in the shooting response.

04:18

‘Multiple systemic failures’ in police response to Texas school shooting, report finds

‘Multiple systemic failures’ in police response to Texas school shooting, report finds

The Texas Department of Public Safety, which had more than 90 state troopers at the scene, has also launched an internal investigation into the response by state police.

School officials have said the campus at Robb Elementary will no longer be used. Instead, campuses elsewhere in Uvalde will serve as temporary classrooms for junior school students, not all of whom are willing to return to school in-person following the shooting.

School officials say a virtual academy will be offered for students. The district has not said how many students will attend virtually, but a new state law passed last year in Texas following the pandemic limits the number of eligible students receiving remote instruction to “10 per cent of all enrolled students within a given school system.”

Schools can seek a waiver to exceed the limit but Uvalde has not done so, according to Melissa Holmes, a spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency.

‘Kids joke around like that’: Uvalde shooter’s online threats dismissed as harmless

New measures to improve school safety in Uvalde include “8-foot, non-scalable perimeter fencing” at elementary, middle and high school campuses, according to the school district. Officials say they have also installed additional security cameras, upgraded locks, enhanced training for district staff and improving communication.

However, according to the district’s own progress reports, as of Tuesday no fencing had been erected at six of the eight campuses where it was planned, and cameras had only been installed at the high school. Some progress had been made on locks at three of eight campuses, and communication improvement was marked as half complete for each campus.

Uvalde CISD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The United States has faced a spate of brutal gun massacres in recent months, including at a grocery store in a predominately Black neighbourhood in New York state and at an Independence Day parade in Illinois.

In June, US lawmakers broke a decades-long stalemate on firearms control, passing the first major safety regulations in almost 30 years, less than 24 hours after the Supreme Court bolstered the constitutional right to bear arms.