About 200 parents of surviving Silver Rail Elementary students met Wednesday with district officials, consulting psychologists and police nearly three weeks after an armed gunman killed four and injured two at the Bend school.
The meeting, termed a listening session, gave parents a chance to ask questions about their children’s planned return to school Nov. 12. Parents, who could not be seen on camera during the livestreamed gathering, were polite but clearly also “hurting and scared” as one mother put it. In voices sometimes choked with tears, many demanded to know what district officials were going to do differently to keep children safe.
Would there be bulletproof glass? What about an armed guard? And what would be done to help students like the shooter before they show up at a classroom with a gun?
“The school fortification that everybody has been talking about tonight is a no-brainer,” said one person at Wednesday’s meeting. “The cost is a no-brainer because we can’t put a price on our kids’ and teachers’ safety and lives. What is the process that you are going to apply … to make this place as safe as possible?”
While there is certainly no way to put a dollar figure on the life of a child, there is also no clear proof that increased physical protections at schools beyond locked doors actually protect children.
“Even with (lock-down) drills there isn’t statistical evidence that this is anything more than safety theater,” Jessica Dimmock, co-director of an HBO documentary on the multibillion-dollar “school hardening” industry, said in a recent interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive. “It maybe feels better, but that doesn’t mean it’s actually making it safer.”
Just since 2018, Education Week has tracked 268 school shootings that killed 165 people and injured 451. Now Silver Rail parents and Bend-LaPine school officials are confronting a question communities across the country have faced after school shootings: What actually keeps schoolchildren safe?
Decades of research offers some answers.
Laws proven to keep guns out of kids’ hands, in-school screening protocols for troubled kids and a community-wide investment in the health and well-being of young people have been shown to prevent gun violence, said Sonali Rajan, a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York.
Advocates and experts say there is more that Oregon and Oregonians can do at a state policy level and in their own communities to keep children and the schools they attend safer in the years to come.
“The goal is not that we should simply be able to effectively respond to a shooting once it begins,” Rajan said. “The goal is to not only create the conditions that make a shooting less likely but to make schools a place where kids are able to thrive.”
Hardening unproven
In recent years, school districts nationwide have sunk billions of dollars into “hardening” schools with many of the measures Silver Rail parents begged for on Wednesday night, plus dozens more.
Companies featured in Thoughts and Prayers, the documentary about school hardening, produce pop-up kevlar shields, bullet-proof classroom art and reinforced window coverings.
“The industry is filled with people who see the government is not going to solve this for us,” said Dimmock, the film’s co-director. “So they’re trying to innovate in this very entrepreneurial way. Most people are trying to help. It’s just the wrong solution.”
In a review of school safety studies, the Learning Policy Institute, a think tank focused on improving educational outcomes, found no evidence that controlling building access, adding security cameras to schools or using metal detectors helped keep schools safe. Even adding an armed police officer was found to have a negligible positive effect on safety and to carry other risks, “including increased suspensions, expulsions, police referrals, and student arrests.”
Those risks were up to three times higher for Black children, the group most likely to be injured or killed by guns both at school and at home.
“I’m not suggesting we abandon all emergency preparedness,” Rajan said. But she said hardening is expensive and comes with tradeoffs: “Can we afford to pay for the art teacher? Can we feed kids breakfast and lunch? Can we pay teachers enough?”
There is no way of knowing how a future attack might unfold, Rajan said. Bullet-resistant glass might have slowed the shooter at Silver Rail because he entered the school by blasting out a glass door panel. But it would have had no effect on, say, a student carrying a gun in their backpack. Physical barriers can’t predict or prevent every scenario.
Indeed, Bend-LaPine had a robust physical security plan in place before Oct. 15 that included a recently upgraded door locking system, a well-respected lockdown training program, security cameras pointed at entrances and exits and secure, single-point entry at each school. Bend police officers were at the door two minutes and four seconds from the first 911 call, according to the school district’s director of safety, Scott Bojanowski.
“I can’t promise anyone that we can mitigate risk all the way to zero,” Bojanowski said. “I wish I could … it’s just not reality.”
No school official can eliminate the risk of violence entirely, Rajan said. Instead, she said policymakers and school officials “have to distinguish between what happened in a particular tragedy and what the scientific evidence tells us about the next one.”
Sandy Hook surviving teacher Abbey Clements said parents and teachers at her Connecticut elementary school also looked to school administrators for safety reassurances they could not give after 20 children and six staff were killed there. She helped found an organization called Teachers Unify to End Gun Violence that aims to bring teachers to the table when gun violence prevention decisions are being made. It endorses a list of holistic preventative measures.
“We all wish there was one thing we could do to a school to make it safe,” Clements said, “but we know it’s going to take a lot of different things.”
Gun laws that work
Oregon has a law requiring guns to be stored unloaded in a gun safe or fitted with a wire trigger lock. Such laws have been proven to reduce the incidence of gun deaths, especially among children.
And since at least three quarters of school shooters nationwide get the guns they use from inside their homes, adults keeping guns locked up could prevent the next tragedy before it happens, gun safety advocates say.
Oregon State Sen. Lisa Reynolds, a doctor by training who helped pass the state’s safe storage law, said its effect so far has been mixed.
“There doesn’t seem to be a lot of people getting penalized,” the Portland Democrat said. “We have seen a decline in accidental shootings by kids. But more and more kids are bringing guns to school and youth suicide by gun has not gone down.”
Last week, for instance, a student at Glencoe High School in Hillsboro brought a handgun to school, which prompted a “brief hold” at the campus while the student was brought to the School Resource Officer’s room, according to TV station KOIN.
In Texas, a law requiring adults to keep guns out of the hands of children carries criminal penalties. The state’s education code requires schools to inform parents of how to safely store firearms. Michigan also requires schools to send such notices, though local reporting indicates only half were in compliance at the end of September.
Last week, Gov. Tina Kotek directed Oregon’s 197 school districts to send home a one-pager about safe gun storage by Friday. It is unclear how many superintendents have completed the task. Of seven districts surveyed by The Oregonian/OregonLive on Wednesday, four said they had already sent the information or would soon. The others did not immediately respond to the newsroom’s query.
A spokesperson for Bend-LaPine said the district had been sending such notices regularly for at least four years. Making such communications an annual requirement would have to come from lawmakers in Salem.
Oregon’s safe storage law also fails to specify who is responsible for securing guns owned by people younger than 18, which is legal in Oregon for certain firearms, including long guns and assault rifles. In the Bend case, for example, law enforcement sources have told The Oregonian/OregonLive that the shooter’s mother purchased the gun for her son. Under current Oregon law, it’s not clear she can be held criminally liable for him removing the gun from their home that day.
Tom O’Connor, a founder of Oregon-based Gun Owners for Responsible Ownership, said he grew up hunting and fishing and doesn’t consider safe-storage requirements an undue burden.
“The real responsibility is with the adult,” he said. “As parents, it’s our responsibility, not the child’s responsibility.”
His organization’s website recommends different types of safes, including ones that unlock quickly for storing handguns kept for protection. He and others formed the group after the Clackamas Town Center shooting in 2012, in which the shooter used his roommate’s gun, which had been left unsecured in a closet. O’Connor’s organization also supports requirements to do a better job informing people about safe storage practices.
State gun laws do influence the likelihood of school shootings, according to a 2023 study co-authored by Rajan and published in the National Library of Medicine. States with lower levels of gun ownership and stricter gun laws have fewer school shootings, researchers found. Oregon’s gun laws land on the permissive side of the scale used in the study, which also reports a high rate of gun ownership – just over 50% of households – in the state.
“K-12 schools in states with more permissive gun laws and higher rates of gun ownership must bear in mind the increased likelihood of access to firearms within their communities as they consider the best ways in which to keep their schools safe,” the study states.
O’Connor and other Oregon gun safety advocates also support three laws narrowly approved by voters under Measure 114 in 2022. Still tied up in court battles, they would require a purchase permit and a completed background check before a gun sale and would ban the sale of high-capacity magazines.
A decision from the Oregon Supreme Court on whether the laws contained in Measure 114 square with the state’s constitution is expected soon.
Proven interventions
Clements, the Sandy Hook surviving teacher, said one of the most effective things schools can do to prevent violence is to provide a clear way for staff to report alarming student behavior and make sure those reports are followed up on.
“Trust me, teachers lose sleep over kids, certain things that they say,” Clements said.
Bend-LaPine School District already employs onsite campus monitors and a behavioral threat assessment manager who trains staff, assesses concerning behavior and coordinates with school mental health teams.
Emily Moser is the national director of Oregon-based YouthLine, a mental health crisis call service that can be reached by texting the phrase “teen2teen” to 839863. (Young people can also call or text 988, the national mental health crisis line.)
Moser said young people can help keep themselves and their friends safe by anonymously reporting concerning behavior by email, text or phone to the SafeOregon tip line. Community members can do their part, too.
“Notice teenagers,” she said. “Talk to them. You can be a neighbor and say hello to the kid at the bus stop. Do your part to create community.”
Volunteering as a coach or tutor or through a mentorship program can help, too, she said. Such connections can encourage kids to feel like they are part of a larger network beyond their homes and schools, Moser said. That kind of involvement, whether it is through a church, a game club or a sports team, is “a huge protective factor.”
Next steps in Oregon
For Silver Rail, the healing is just beginning. Clinical psychologists at Wednesday’s meeting told parents to take it day-by-day and that the best thing they could do for their children would be to send them back to school next week. Having a predictable schedule and being surrounded by friends both protect against long-term harm, they said.
Most trauma symptoms for most people will likely dissipate over time, the psychologists said. Meanwhile, the district is seeking additional funding for more clinicians to support Silver Rail families who need ongoing or more intensive help.
This week, the school’s teachers are receiving training and preparing for students’ imminent return.
Reynolds said there was already talk among lawmakers about bringing new legislation forward to address what she sees as gaps in Oregon’s gun laws, including clarifying who is responsible for securing guns owned by minors and requiring public health education on safe storage. There are also relevant school funding debates, including the current limit on state special education funding, likely to come up in the next session, which starts in January.
Reynolds encouraged anyone who is motivated to end school shootings to get involved.
“Oregon has taken some steps to prevent shooting and we will take more,” she said. “I want people to not despair. There are solutions we know can save lives.”
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