When students return to school in Uvalde today, just 15 weeks after the deadliest school shooting in Texas history, 19 students and two teachers will not be present.

In just more than three months since the massacre, residents have sought to help children return to normalcy with familiar back-to-school rituals, tinged by grief.

In August, one family from Lockhart donated nearly 800 backpacks to students. The next day, an annual wellness fair at the Uvalde civic center included a booth with information on how to care for children and parents’ mental and physical health. Later that evening, people danced and enjoyed live music outside the town courthouse during a summer sendoff block party hosted by local businesses.

Meanwhile, families have questioned whether safety plans for the new school year are enough, and some have been forced to make hard decisions about whether or not to send their children back at all.

Parents, like Brianna Gonzales, are keeping their kids in the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District. Others, like Adam Martinez, whose 8-year-old son Zayon was present at Robb Elementary on the day of the shooting, will be sending their children to online classes, instead.

Students from Robb Elementary will be relocated to two other schools, and all schools in Uvalde implemented new security measures before the first day of class. Dalton Elementary added an 8-foot fence around the campus perimeter. Sacred Heart Parish School, which began classes two weeks ago, upgraded its security to include new cameras and polycarbonate bullet-resistant sheeting hidden behind colorful paper signs on outside windows.

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/09/06/uvalde-back-to-school/.

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