Uvalde, Texas, school officials will discuss whether to fire suspended district police chief Pete Arredondo next week, three months after an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School.

Arredondo should have been the commanding officer of the response to the shooting, according to the district’s active shooter plan that he helped write, as CrimeOnline previously reported.

But a Texas House committee said in a scathing report last month that the responding officers lacked clear leadership and that Arrendondo failed to assume the role of situation commander, and no one else did either.

The result was dozens of officers waiting more than an hour in the hallway outside the classroom where Salvador Ramos was. Arrendondo told the committee he believed Ramos had barricaded himself inside. The committee said he “wasted precious time” looking for a key to the classroom door, which didn’t latch properly and probably wasn’t locked — no one tried it.

Ramos was eventually shot by a US Border Patrol team that breached the classroom and killed him.

Arredondo was put on leave on June 22. He also resigned as a city councilmember, a post he was elected to a few weeks before the shooting. He was sworn in at a secret meeting after the shooting but never attended a meeting.

The school board, which has been under pressure to fire Arredondo, will discuss his future on August 24, and they have hired outside attorneys to help them ahead of the hearing, the Texas Tribune said. The board said last month it was going to consider termination after Superintendent Hal Harrell recommended it but postponed the meeting.

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[Featured image: FILE – In this May 26, 2022, photo, Uvalde School Police Chief Pete Arredondo, third from left, stands during a news conference outside of the Robb Elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills, FILE)]