A scathing federal report on the Uvalde mass shooting released Thursday highlighted the miscommunication and lack of action between the hundreds of officers who showed up to Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022.

The Justice Department鈥檚 also came with plenty of recommendations to improve schools safety and active shooter protocols in the state. Texas lawmakers last year passed to address many of those issues, but failed to include more mental health screenings as recommended by the report. School districts believe HB 3 was a step in the right direction, but have complained the state funding allocated to pay for the changes isn鈥檛 enough to cover the expenses they鈥檒l have to incur. There were efforts during to add more funding, but the fight over school vouchers sank them.

The report鈥檚 recommendations include having active shooter plans for every school, regular meetings between local law enforcement and local government officials to conduct security exercises, replacing or upgrading all faulty school doors and locks, mental health screenings for victims and better communication between law enforcement, school officials and the community.

鈥淗ad law enforcement agencies followed generally accepted practices in an active shooter situation and gone right after the shooter to stop him, lives would have been saved and people would have survived,鈥� said U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland during a news conference on Thursday.

Gov. , who praised the police response immediately after the shooting and later said he was misled about how it transpired, released a statement Thursday thanking the Justice Department for its report. He said the state has already adopted some of the measures it recommended and would review others.

Nineteen children and two teachers were killed during the Robb Elementary . The gunman was able to enter the school through a series of unlocked doors.

When officers arrived, they retreated after coming under fire and waited for backup. The decision was counter to the active shooter doctrine developed after the 1999 Columbine High School mass shooting in Colorado, which dictates that officers must immediately confront the shooters.

Leadership was also amiss among the plethora of law enforcement officers who responded to the shooting, with no one acting as the 鈥渋ncident commander.鈥� Pete Arredondo, the Uvalde school district鈥檚 former police chief, has said he didn鈥檛 believe he was in charge, even though the district鈥檚 active-shooter plan states he was.

The report authors also expressed concern with an active-shooter training course that Uvalde school district police officers received from the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement just months before the massacre, which states that an 鈥渁ctive shooter event can easily morph into a hostage crisis and vice versa.鈥� The Justice Department said that an active shooter event very rarely ceases to be a hostage situation and officers should always seek to eliminate the threat as soon as possible.

Texas is already trying to implement many of the Justice Department’s recommendations. Under HB 3, the state created a safety and security department within the Texas Education Agency and gave it the authority to compel school districts to establish and follow robust safety protocols. Those that fail to meet the agency鈥檚 standards could be put under the state鈥檚 supervision.

Since the 2018 Santa Fe High School shooting, the state has required school districts to submit those plans 鈥� which must include active-shooter strategies 鈥� for the review of the Texas School Safety Center, a think tank at Texas State University created by lawmakers in 2001.

A three-year audit in 2020 found that out of the 1,022 school districts in the state, just 200 districts had active-shooter policies as part of their safety plans. The audit revealed 626 districts did not have active-shooter policies; 196 had active-shooter policies but were deemed insufficient. Only 67 school districts had viable emergency operations plans overall, the report found.

HB3 also tasks the state with setting up teams to conduct security audits at every school district at least once a year. Districts are also required to have an armed person on campus.

In addition, the law requires the TEA to develop standards for notifying parents of 鈥渧iolent activity鈥� on campus and set up school safety review teams to conduct vulnerability assessments of all the school campuses once a year.

In counties with fewer than 350,000 people, the law requires the sheriff to hold semi-annual meetings to discuss school safety and law enforcement response to 鈥渧iolent incidents.鈥� The law states response plans must include a clear chain of command and that all radios must be working.

Each school district is also required to give the Texas Department of Public Safety and other law enforcement agencies in their area a walkthrough and a map of each campus in an effort to avoid confusion when responding to an incident.

To tackle mental health, school employees who regularly interact with children will need to complete an 鈥渆vidence-based mental health first-aid training program.鈥� The TEA would reimburse the employee for the time and money spent on the training.

The law gave each school district $15,000 per campus and $10 per student to pay for safety upgrades. Lawmakers also gave the TEA $1.1 billion to to administer school safety grants among the state鈥檚 school districts.

Many school officials State Sen. , a San Antonio Democrat who represents Uvalde, voted against HB 3 last year because of the funding concerns.

鈥淚t is sick and twisted that we have the largest budget surplus in Texas history and we aren鈥檛 doing a damn thing to keep our kids safe,鈥� he said during a Senate debate on the bill referring to last year鈥檚 $32.7 billion budget surplus. 鈥淲e aren鈥檛 doing anything to prevent another Uvalde.鈥�

Lawmakers tried to give school districts more money to beef up security on campuses late last year. School districts were close to receiving an additional $1 billion for school safety but the legislation stalled after school voucher legislation failed to pass. Abbott had vowed to veto any new public education funding if it didn鈥檛 come in hand with a voucher proposal, his top legislative priority last year.

School officials were already struggling to meet the safety requirements in HB 3, like the mandate to staff every campus with an armed officer. Dallas Independent School District Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde told The Texas Tribune last month that with more than 220 campuses, the district needs $3 million annually to post trained security guards at every school. While the district did receive grants from the state, Elizalde believes they aren鈥檛 a reliable source of funding for the future. And if the district doesn鈥檛 receive more money to pay for safety improvements, it may have to cut programs and potentially lay off staff.

鈥淭hat has become our biggest obstacle 鈥� how do you, time and time again, continue to make cuts to make sure that we have the safest schools possible?鈥� Elizalde said.

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UVALDE 鈥� U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said some victims of the 2022 Uvalde school shooting would have survived if Texas law enforcement officers 鈥� who waited more than an hour to confront the gunman 鈥� had followed “generally accepted practices.”

Those assertions came Thursday after the U.S. Justice Department into the hundreds of Texas law enforcement officers鈥� fumbled response to the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting, finding 鈥渃ascading failures of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy and training.鈥�

The long-anticipated 575-page report detailed the many catastrophic errors of the May 24, 2022 response, but concluded the most significant was that officers should have immediately recognized that it was an active shooter situation and confronted the gunman, who was with victims in two adjoining classrooms.

Garland called the response 鈥渁 failure that should not have happened鈥� and said he apologized to the relatives of the 21 killed and the 17 injured in the deadliest school shooting in Texas history.

鈥淭heir loved ones deserved better,鈥� Garland said.

The report noted that since the 1999 Columbine High School shooting, American law enforcement officers have been trained to prioritize stopping the shooter while everything else, including officer safety, is secondary.

鈥淭hese efforts must be undertaken regardless of the equipment and personnel available,鈥� the report found. 鈥淭his did not occur during the Robb Elementary shooting response.鈥�

Instead, officers wrongly treated the situation as a barricaded suspect, even as children and teachers . The report noted 鈥渕ultiple stimuli indicating that there was an active threat,鈥� including that an Uvalde school police officer early on told other law enforcement that his wife, a teacher in Room 112, was shot. It took 77 minutes for officers to confront the shooter. died that day and 17 others were injured in one of the country鈥檚 worst school shootings.

The report also found failures in leadership, command and coordination, noting that as more officers, including supervisors from other agencies, descended on the school, no one set up an incident command structure or took charge of the scene.

Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta condemned the medical response, saying that after police breached the classroom and killed the gunman, dead victims were placed on ambulances and children with bullet wounds were put on school buses.

Gupta also criticized misinformation and conflicting accounts that officials disseminated to Uvalde residents and reporters after the shooting.

Supervisors from the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, the Uvalde Police Department, the Uvalde County Sheriff鈥檚 Office, and the Texas Department of Public Safety 鈥渄emonstrated no urgency鈥� in taking control of the incident, which exacerbated the communication problems and overall confusion.

Some failures may have been partly a result of policy and training deficiencies, the report found, noting that the school district police department suggested wrongly in prior training that active shooter situations can transition into hostage or barricaded incidents. DPS lacked an active shooter policy, as did the county sheriff鈥檚 office and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency of the 149 Border Patrol agents who responded.

The report also found that key officers, including Uvalde Police Department Acting Chief Mariano Pargas who arrived within minutes of the shooting, had no active shooter or incident command training.

The vast majority of 380 officers from more than a dozen local, state and federal agencies who responded to the school had never trained together, 鈥渃ontributing to difficulties in coordination and communication.鈥� The report said the 鈥渓ack of pre-planning hampered even well-prepared agencies from functioning at their best.鈥�

Among its recommendations, the report said that officers should 鈥渘ever鈥� treat an active shooter with access to victims as a barricaded suspect. Law enforcement training academies must ensure active shooter training instructs how officers should distinguish between active threats and barricaded or hostage situations. And officers should be prepared to approach the threat using just the tools they have with them, which is often a standard firearm, the report noted.

The federal review by the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services was announced just five days after the shooting. It was led by Orange County Sheriff John Mina, the incident commander during the 2016 Pulse Nightclub massacre in Orlando. In that incident, officers waited three hours to take down the shooter who had barricaded himself with victims in a bathroom.

A Justice Department and National Policing Institute review of that Florida law enforcement response was far less critical than the Uvalde report. It found that Florida officers mostly followed best practices, although it stated the law enforcement agencies in Orlando should update their training and policies.

In the Uvalde review, the federal team reviewed more than 14,100 pieces of data and documentation, including policies, training logs, body camera footage, audio recordings, interview transcripts and photographs. The team visited Uvalde nine times, spending 54 days there, and conducted more than 260 interviews with people from more than 30 organizations and agencies, including law enforcement officers, school staff, medical personnel, survivors and victims鈥� families.

The Uvalde report鈥檚 release comes two months after ProPublica, the Texas Tribune and PBS鈥� Frontline published into the response after gaining access to a trove of investigative materials, including more than 150 interviews with officers and dozens of body cameras. The material showed that the children at Robb Elementary followed active shooter protocols, while many of the officers did not. It detailed how officers treated the situation as a barricaded suspect rather than an active threat even as evidence mounted quickly that children and teachers were injured and with the shooter.

The investigation also analyzed the active shooter training of the local and state police officers who responded prior to the gunman being stopped, finding some had not taken any active shooter training based on their state records. Of those who had, they most commonly only received the training once during their careers and hadn鈥檛 taken it in four years or longer.

The Tribune also revealed that to confront the gunman because he had a deadly AR-15 rifle. With the Washington Post, ProPublica and the Tribune found that and that two children and a teacher were still alive when they were rescued more than an hour later, but then died.

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鈥淭hreats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation鈥檚 core values,鈥� Garland wrote in a media release Monday. 鈥淭hose who dedicate their time and energy to ensuring that our children receive a proper education in a safe environment deserve to be able to do their work without fear for their safety.鈥�

The move comes less than a week after the 90,000-member National School Boards Association urged the Biden administration to act swiftly to protect public school leaders who face 鈥渁n immediate threat鈥� of violence as school board meetings nationwide grow increasingly volatile. The group cited more than 20 instances of threats, harassment and intimidation during board meetings in recent months amid tension over mask mandates and classroom instruction on critical race theory. The school board group referred to the violent threats as 鈥渄omestic terrorism.鈥�

In , Garland called on the federal agencies to meet with local law enforcement in the next month to create a plan to combat the 鈥渄isturbing spike.鈥� The Justice Department also announced plans to create a new task force focused on prosecuting people who threaten school leaders. The task force will include the FBI and the Justice Department鈥檚 criminal, security and civil rights divisions.

Officials also said they would create training resources that help school boards and administrators understand behaviors that constitute threats, how to report dangerous conduct to police and how to preserve relevant evidence.

Chip Slavin, the school board group鈥檚 interim executive director, said in a media release that the Justice Department鈥檚 response sent 鈥渁 strong message to individuals with violent intent who are focused on causing chaos, disrupting our public schools and driving wedges between school boards and the parents, students and communities they serve.鈥�

In one recent incident, police arrested an Illinois man for allegedly hitting a school official as he was being escorted out of a board meeting and, in another, an Ohio school board member received a letter in the mail warning threatening that she would 鈥減ay dearly鈥� for requiring students to wear masks on campus. While some speakers have used board meetings to spread conspiracy theories and hate speech, other critics who frequently clash with their school boards to the national association鈥檚 assertion that their actions constitute 鈥渄omestic terrorism.鈥� Among them is activist and former Wall Street Journal reporter Asra Nomani, who tweeted that the school board group should apologize to parents.

Conservative lawmakers and activists, including Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, were quick to accuse officials of trampling on the free speech rights of parents who speak up at school board meetings. On Twitter, the Biden administration of using 鈥渇ederal law enforcement to punish dissent from the ruling class.鈥�

Read the Justice Department memo here: