by Lexi Churchill, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, and Colleen DeGuzman, The Texas Tribune

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After the 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary, school leaders in Uvalde, Texas, initially planned to publicly defend district Police Chief Pete Arredondo, but officials instead chose to remain silent as investigations into police actions unfolded, newly released records show. Arredondo is now facing criminal charges over law enforcement’s delayed confrontation with the gunman.

The previously unreported details were revealed in over 25,000 pages of records the district has disclosed over the course of a week since Aug. 26 after a yearslong legal fight with news outlets, including ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, which filed over 70 public information requests for the records in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.

The documents should have been published in early August when school leaders and Uvalde County originally released requested records following a settlement with the news organizations. Rob Decker, an attorney representing the school district, admitted at a board meeting Aug. 25 that his office made “an error on our side” by only releasing a fraction of the files. Board members, including Jesse Rizo, who lost his 9-year-old niece Jackie Cazares in the shooting, grilled Decker about the firm’s oversight.

“When we use the word ‘error,’ that’s putting it really lightly,” Rizo said. “The word ‘negligent’ comes to mind.”

However, the district’s law firm may have again failed to disclose all of the requested information, according to Laura Prather, one of the attorneys representing the newsrooms in the records litigation. Prather sent a letter Friday demanding the district publish the remaining files, which could include details about the school maintenance issues with doors that failed to lock, Arredondo’s severance and additional communications among officials. Decker, the district’s lawyer, did not respond to requests for comment.

The school district’s repeated disclosure problems mirror the mistakes made by the city of Uvalde last year, when officials there did not include at least 50 body- and dashcam videos in their first records release. They........

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