A Uvalde mom who lost her 10-year-old child in the Robb Elementary School shooting says the Uvalde school district called her about her surviving 11-year-old daughter wearing ripped jeans to school, just five months after the tragedy.
Kimberly Mata-Rubio shared a screenshot of what appears to be a transcript of a voicemail left on Oct. 26 by a staff member of her 11-year-old surviving daughter’s elementary school.
In the screenshot, the caller advises Mata-Rubio to “please bring either another pair of pants or maybe some leggings” to an unnamed elementary school, adding that “the cuts” in the pants her daughter was wearing "are a little too high.”
“One thing we’re not going to do is dress code my 11-year-old for some ripped jeans,” Mata-Rubio tweeted. “UCISD (Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District), focus on school security. Maybe, if you had, my daughter, her little sister would still be alive.”
TODAY Parents reached out to the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District for comment but did not hear back at the time of publication.
Mata-Rubio’s Twitter feed is a mix of candid descriptions of a mourning mother’s pain, demands for more accountability from local officials, and joyful memories of her daughter, Alexandria Aniyah “Lexi” Rubio, who was shot and killed inside her fourth grade classroom along with 20 others at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022.
"I close my eyes and speak to you often," the 33-year-old mother of six tweeted on Oct. 28. "Sometimes, in the stillness, I feel your reply."
TODAY Parents also reached out to Mata-Rubio who, via a spokesperson, said she's "focusing on her family at the moment and isn't available at this time."
Emotions run high in Uvalde. One day after Lexi’s mother’s tweet, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Col. Steven McCraw said at a public meeting that his department “did not fail the community” of Uvalde.
Lives Robbed, an activist group formed by the friends and families of the Uvalde massacre victims — including Mata-Rubio — responded to McCraw in a written statement sent to TODAY Parents, saying in part: "To be clear, the Department's failures on that day are not up for debate. Our children are dead."
TODAY Parents reached out to the Texas Department of Public Safety for comment, but did not hear back at the time of publication.
Nearly 400 law enforcement officers from various agencies arrived at the scene of the school shooting on May 24, 2022, waiting 77 minutes before entering the classrooms and engaging the shooter.
A report released in July by a Texas House committee blamed law enforcement and the school district for “systemic failures and egregiously poor decision making.” Since then, Uvalde schools police chief Pete Arredondo has been fired and the entire UCISD police force has been suspended.
Many parents and family members of the victims have continued to call for the entire UCSID school board to resign in the wake of the shooting. So far, no board members have resigned from their post.
"My baby, our babies, deserved so much better," Mata-Rubio tweeted on Wednesday, Oct. 12. "I hope their smiling faces haunt those who failed them — just as the image of my daughter, in her bright yellow casket, haunts me."
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