As the sun rose through tips of the pines in the west Bend trees Wednesday morning, a sound not heard in six days cut through the cold morning air: the babble of children pouring into school.
Those William E. Miller Elementary students — and thousands of others across Bend-La Pine Schools — returned to class Oct. 21 for the first time since a 16-year-old gunman killed three students and a teacher inside a classroom at another school, Silver Rail Elementary, on Oct. 15.
Across town in southeast Bend, Silver Rail remained quiet on Wednesday morning. It’s still not clear when the school might reopen.
Parents at other schools told the Source they’re struggling with anxiety about the return, but say their kids are ready to see friends and regain a sense of normalcy. Others recognize that need, but say they’re not comfortable sending kids back to class and are calling on the the school district to communicate its plans for increased safety.
District staff and one set of parents stood for media interviews in the back parking lot of Miller Elementary during Wednesday’s drop off. The district asked reporters not to approach parents that morning out of respect for privacy.
Looking for a sense of normalcy
Parents Elle and Brent Poole, who volunteered for an interview, said normally their kids might ride the bus or their bikes to Miller. On Wednesday, their second grader wanted to be walked all the way to the door.
“These are our kids, these are our babies,” Elle Poole said. “We wear our hearts on our sleeves for our kids. Anytime you’re sending them out into the world — whether it’s school or anywhere else — knowing that something this horrible can happen, it shatters you. It’s terrifying.”
The Pooles took their two boys to a free soccer camp during the days off, as the brothers processed the shooting in two very different ways. The eldest, a fourth grader, had many questions. The second grader was mostly quiet.
But both were ready to return to class, even if their parents weren’t.
“You could feel it; they wanted their routine back. They wanted to see their friends,” Brent Poole said.
Schools have been making their own preparations for the first day back. The district used Monday and Tuesday to help administrators and staff both deal with their own grief and get ready for difficult conversations with students.
Pacific Crest Middle School Principal Sean Keating told the Source the school’s plan is to have a regular day of instruction, except for one major difference: teachers will start the morning by reading an “age appropriate” script to address the tragedy, or say something similar in their own words.
“We acknowledge it will not be a typical day in many ways,” Keating said. “Our goal is to bring those routines and that sense of safety and security back for kids.”
The district brought in extra counselors and substitute teachers to support students and staff, officials said.
Not all staff returned to their jobs on Wednesday, Bend-La Pine Superintendent Steve Cook said. Staff at each of the district’s 32 other schools had close ties to Silver Rail. Cook said the district’s HR department was working “diligently” to make sure teachers are supported and posted an array of resources to its website.
But there’s no quick way to heal the trauma educators are facing, Cook said.
“We’re going to have some ongoing issues with this,” he told the Source. “This is a tragedy that will affect us for years to come.”
Wednesday’s start was abnormal in another way: Police officers were stationed outside of each school in the district for extra security. The officers left after drop-off and returned when school ended.
Calls to address safety concerns
At Pine Ridge Elementary in northeast Bend, some parents lingered outside the school long after their kids headed inside, said Sasha Lawler, mother of a first grader at the school. When reached by phone, Lawler’s husband, Jedd, was still there around 11 am, worried about the child’s safety.
“It definitely was a difficult drop-off this morning,” Lawler said.
But after Wednesday, Lawler said she planned to keep her child out of school until she hears a more concrete plan to make safety changes at Bend schools. She said she doesn’t feel like school is safe, but let her child go back Wednesday just to be with friends.
“Not sending (the child) to school is not what we want, but it doesn’t feel like a choice that we have,” Lawler said.
As of Wednesday afternoon, more than 1,700 people signed a petition from a Silver Rail parent calling for “immediate” safety improvements at Bend-La Pine Schools. The petition asks the district to put a school-based police officer at every school, conduct comprehensive security assessments, review emergency response protocol, create a new parent-led safety committee and communicate the timeline for improvements.
Another group planned on attending Wednesday night’s Bend City Council meeting to advocate for funding for more School Resource Officers.
“We’re worried this is just going to get swept under the rug, and everyone’s going to forget about it until it happens again,” Lawler said. “We don’t believe we can eliminate the possibility 100%, but we do believe there are things that can be done.”
The district has promised a “top-to-bottom” analysis of school safety following the shooting. Cook told the Source Wednesday the district would be pushing out more information on resources and current safety measures soon. He also said he was “anticipating” there would be an after-action report on how safety measures fared during the shooting, but didn’t give a timeline.
He pointed out that the district didn’t even have access to the Silver Rail Elementary building until Monday, when police relinquished the crime scene.
And new information about what happened is still surfacing, he said.
“There’s a lot to consume and a lot to digest about what all we can learn about how this whole event transpired, and then what’s our response to all of that,” Cook said.
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