Return to Silver Rail: Students prepare to walk back in 28 days after tragedy, other schools have varied

(Update: adding data, comments from officials during Nov. 4th Bend-La Pine engagement session)

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- Silver Rail Elementary School students are scheduled to return to their school Thursday, November 12th, for the first time since four people were killed in the mass shooting there 28 days earlier.

Across the country, communities have made widely different decisions about what to do with school buildings after mass shootings. There is no national timeline — and no single definition of when a school is truly ready.

Angie Moreland with the National Mass Violence Center told Silver Rail families last week that returning will not be easy and that people will experience the process differently.

“Getting back to school is going to be tough,” Moreland said. “This is the nightmare that you didn’t want. … Recognizing that I see faces in the room and, you know, people are having different reactions — and you will have different reactions.”

Moreland said there is no date when trauma simply ends, but avoiding the school indefinitely can also allow fear to grow.

“Togetherness is so beneficial to them,” Moreland said. “And what we know from avoidance is the longer you avoid, the more that fear becomes.”

At Silver Rail, the school’s south-facing doors have been replaced, and a new wall separates the impacted classroom from the rest of the building.

“There will be a temporary wall there in that kind of alcove where the junction room was, so that nobody’s able to see into that room,” said Scott Bojanowski, Bend-La Pine Schools’ director of safety.

The physical responses at other schools have varied widely:

• Students at Thurston High School in Springfield returned five days after the 1998 shooting, including to the cafeteria where it happened.
• Marysville-Pilchuck High School in Washington reopened after 10 days, but its cafeteria remained closed and was eventually replaced.
• Students in Parkland, Florida, returned after two weeks, while the building where 17 people were killed remained sealed for six years.
• Oxford High School in Michigan reopened after nearly eight weeks.
• Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut was demolished and rebuilt on the same property.
• Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, remains closed. A new school opened at a different location more than three years after the shooting.

Those decisions can depend on the extent of the physical damage, the availability of alternative space, and input from families, staff members, and survivors.

Bend-La Pine Schools Superintendent Dr. Steven Cook said the long-term future of the impacted space at Silver Rail will be determined with the community.

“We want to figure out what that space needs to be. And we don’t want to make that decision by ourselves,” Cook said. “That’s going to be a community-wide decision. It will not be boarded up forever, unless you all say that’s what you want.”

Silver Rail families will be able to walk through the school before students return. Thursday will be a shortened school day, followed by a full day Friday.

The district says a dedicated school resource officer, additional mental health specialists, extra staff members, and another administrator will be on campus.

While the district says the building will be ready, it recognizes that each family may reach that point at a different time.