The Department of Education, which oversees schools in the Texas city of Uvalde, on Friday suspended police officers whose botched response to a horrific mass shooting has been widely criticized.

Nineteen young children and two teachers were killed when a teenage gunman went on a rampage on May 24 at Robb Elementary School in America’s worst school shooting in a decade. The police eventually shot the shooter.

Police in Uvalde have been under intense scrutiny since it emerged that more than a dozen officers waited for over an hour outside the classrooms where the shooting took place, doing nothing while children were dead or dying.

On Friday, Uvalde’s consolidated independent school district announced it was suspending the small police force responsible for security at the few public schools under its aegis.

“Due to recent developments… the district has taken the decision to suspend all activities of Uvalde’s CISD Police Department for a period of time,” it said in a statement.

“Currently employed officers will fill other roles in the district.”

In August, the school board fired the county police chief who oversaw the response to the shooting.

The district said a review of officials’ responses to the tragedy is ongoing.

“The District has asked the Texas Department of Public Safety to provide additional Soldiers for campus and extracurricular activities.

“We are confident that the safety of staff and students will not be compromised during this transition.”

A total of 376 officers — border patrol agents, state police, city police, local sheriff’s departments and elite troops — responded to the massacre, according to a July report by the Texas state legislature.

But the situation was “chaotic” because officers acted “carelessly” to subdue the gunman, the report said.

School shootings have become a totemic reminder of the United States’ gun paralysis.

A majority of voters favor tighter controls on the use and purchase of firearms, but the country’s political class has proven reluctant to respond in a meaningful way by invoking a constitutional “right to bear arms.”

In June, reform advocates scored a limited victory with the passage of legislation requiring increased background checks for younger buyers and making federal money available to states introducing “red flag” laws that allow courts to temporarily remove guns from people who be viewed as a threat.