Bend-La Pine Schools Recounts Response to Silver Rail Shooting

At the first Bend-La Pine Schools Board of Directors meeting since the deadly shooting at Silver Rail Elementary on Oct. 15, district staff provided a second-by-second timeline of the attack and the response — and explained how decisions were made in the chaotic aftermath as families attempted to reunite with their children.

District officials and attendees became emotional at times during a nearly two-hour presentation Tuesday night. Parents followed by continuing calls for action — both on school safety and support for vulnerable students — and critiques of the district’s return-to-school process.

“Every morning when I drop my daughter off at school, I think about those families,” Marie Dos Santos, a mother at R.E. Jewell Elementary, a school about a mile-and-a-half from Silver Rail, said during Tuesday’s board meeting. “I think about the teachers, and I think about how badly we need to make sure we’re doing everything we can to protect our children.”

On Oct. 17, paper, posters, cards and signs were filled with messages to the victims of an Oct. 15 shooting at Silver Rail Elementary.

In last month’s attack, police said a 16-year-old former student climbed a perimeter fence, shot his way through the glass at an exterior door with a shotgun before entering the first classroom on the left, which was for students with special needs. He shot and killed three children and a teacher and injured two others before an educator wrestled the gunman in an attempt to take his gun. A bystander who had followed him into the school then shot and killed the assailant.

Bend-La Pine Schools Assistant Safety Director Kayla Martin Tuesday evening shed more light on how quickly the attack happened. According to the timeline, the shooter was in the classroom for exactly one minute and 10 seconds before the bystander, Silver Rail father of two, Kaylub Giamanco, entered. One minute and 28 seconds after Giamanco entered the classroom, the first police officer was through the door at Silver Rail.

The timeline shows the first 911 calls came in 31 seconds before the shooter entered the classroom. A 911 dispatcher notified the school to go into lockdown one minute and 55 seconds later — four seconds after Giamanco went in to end the attack.

District Safety Director Scott Bojanowski and Martin were with Bend PD Sgt. James Kinsella, who oversees the School Resource Officer program, at the district’s safety office in northeast Bend when the 911 call came in, according to Bojanowski’s account Tuesday. They headed toward the school and put nearby Jewell Elementary School and Caldera High School into “secure” status, not knowing if the shooter had entered Silver Rail. Dispatch confirmed shortly after that, Bojanowski said.

The district sent an urgent alert to Silver Rail families at 1:13 pm, a little more than 10 minutes after police entered the school to find the assailant dead. Police sent an alert to media about an active shooter a few minutes later.

At 2:01 pm, families across the district were notified of the lockdown at Silver Rail. At 3:11 pm, all the families of the victims were notified, according to the district.

Difficult decisions

In recent community meetings, some Silver Rail parents have expressed frustrations that they weren’t notified about the shooting fast enough, that they were left in the dark for several hours about whether their child was safe, and that at least one of the victims’ family members was notified at a nearby church where hundreds of parents gathered to pick up their children.

One parent told the Source on Oct. 15 it was the “worst three hours of our lives.”

Bojanowski said the district and Bend police had done several active shooter trainings in recent years and reviewed reunification protocols. Typically, the school would remain in lockdown for several hours to ensure no other threats remain. Oct. 15 was different, Bojanowski said. It quickly became clear the threat was over, and the district could almost immediately start bussing students to the reunification center, where many parents were already waiting.

“One of the tasks we were working on was identifying victims,” said Bojanowski, a former emergency manger in the U.S. Army, his voice cracking with emotion. That was a deliberate process, he said. “I know that weighs heavy on everybody else that had to wait to know if their children were OK. But it was very important to those of us leading that incident that we got that right.”

At the reunification center, the district then chose not to announce to parents that their children were safe, for fear that family members or friends of victims might get the wrong message, Martin said.

Martin, who has a master’s degree in emergency management, called it the “hardest decision I’ve made.”

“We knew we could not make the mistake of letting someone think that their child was safe and then go back on that,” Martin said.

Some parents of the deceased had already shown up at the reunification center before the district knew who needed to be notified, Martin said. Telling them on the spot was more dignified than sending them home with the implication that they wouldn’t get to meet up with their child, she said.

“We were trying to control the worst moment of someone’s life in the best and most respectful way we could,” Martin said.

Board Member Jenn Lynch said the standard reunification guidebook district staff are trained on is “fully silent” on how to handle a death notification scenario when families might be disconnected.

“They say this thing of waiting hours to understand your child is safe is not OK,” Lynch said. “That is never OK. And yet, they don’t actually fully say what we are supposed to do in this situation.

“Based on my reading of that plan, we followed the protocol to the letter,” Lynch added. “And also, the protocol is missing.”

Martin said she reread the entire reunification guide the weekend following the shooting.

“I wanted to know, what’s in that section on notifying injured or deceased,” Martin said. “It says, ‘It’s too complicated to guide you.’ I wanted to throw the guide, I was so frustrated.”

Push continues for safe buildings and safety nets

At Tuesday’s meeting, several parents called for different types of change in response to last month’s tragedy.

Silver Rail parent Trey Heiss delivered the board a formal petition calling for dedicated School Resource Officers at all Bend-La Pine Schools, an immediate review of emergency response plans and district-wide assessments of building security. More than 3,000 people have signed on to Heiss’ online petition. He requested the district respond to the petition within 30 days.

Parent Mo Mitchell said the district should focus on supporting children at risk of falling through the cracks.

“We don’t need more cops,” Mitchell said. “We need social-emotional learning, we need relationship. We need to prioritize the culture of our most vulnerable students.”

Kim Drew said the district should reevaluate emergency response plans across the board and tailor them to students with disabilities.

“I’m concerned our current emergency plan asks some children to do things that their disabilities make impossible,” Drew said.