The day before they were set to return to school, a number of Silver Rail Elementary students and their parents gathered at a local flower shop. They were greeted out front by Charlie, a therapy French bulldog. Inside Flowers by Eryn & Company, the children could color and write messages for their teachers. They wrapped the notes around bunches of flowers to give the teachers on Thursday — Silver Rail’s first day of school since the deadly shooting there Oct. 15.

One child dedicated their flowers to the “best substitute ever.” Another wrote “I love you” to their favorite teacher.

The event offered children and families a chance to get together, said Nicole Ybarrondo, a Silver Rail parent and founder of the crowdsourced Silver Rail Community Fund. She called it an “act of service” to Silver Rail staff. The fund paid for the flowers, as well as coffee and tacos from shops next to the florist. Outside the coffee shop on the crisp fall day, kids and the adults with them stood around tables tie-dyeing T-shirts and using Play-Doh. At one point, several kids started throwing piles of fallen leaves at each other, laughing while their parents watched.

Students at Silver Rail Elementary School return to classrooms Thursday, nearly a month after a shooting inside the school killed three students and a teacher. A parent fatally shot the 16-year-old assailant, a former Silver Rail student. As the Silver Rail and broader Bend-La Pine communities recover from the violent incident, the school district, its educators and families are focusing on building strong support across the city. The last month has brought people in Bend closer together while exposing gaps and opportunities to learn.

Like restarting the school year

Across town from the flower shop, Bend-La Pine school district officials were showing families and reporters preparations they had made to reopen Silver Rail. Outside, the memorial of flowers, balloons and stuffed animals that had been there was moved. In its place were sandwich boards thanking the community and letting them know items left on school grounds would be gathered, removed and stored daily. The police tape is gone. What remains are chalk messages of love and strength for the school whose mascot is the steam engine.

Inside, a teacher has emptied her classroom collection of books and stuffed animals to create a display to greet students as they come in. A colorful Bend mountainscape mural by local artist Sheila Dunn covers a temporary wall. It’s over the door to the special education classroom where the shooting took place.

When families and staff walked through Silver Rail this week, they were getting reacquainted with a space that for some, used to feel like home. In an attempt to give students comfort in what could be a challenging transition Thursday, students put together bags of sensory items they could tap into if they need a break during the school day. At the end of the visit, students and families went into the gym, where teachers were gathered. Children could get a cookie before they left.

“What we noticed is that some families were wanting to go right to their teachers,” said Sarah Barclay, president of the Bend Education Association, the union representing teachers. “They love them, they want to see them.”

Returning to school can be a community’s first milestone in healing after a tragic event, said Mike McCart, a clinical child psychologist with the National Mass Violence Center.

“It is people coming together, loving one another, supporting one another, being with one another,” McCart said. “That connection has a natural effect to bring about a healing process.”

Bend-La Pine school district officials called on McCart and center co-director Angela Moreland-Johnson after the shooting, to provide a service they’ve brought to 65 communities after a mass violence incident.

The school community, McCart said, is typically one of the most important connections — for the adults who work there and the students. So being together again is healing too, he said.

It’s important to remember, he said, that held within the walls are many happy times too.

“That building has a lot of memories of joy,” he said. “And while it might be hard to return to a place like this where something tragic happened, it also is a place where students and teachers have spent many, many hours of their days laughing, being with one another, learning.”

Silver Rail will start with a half-day Thursday. School district Superintendent Steve Cook said the district is bringing in about seven substitute teachers, as well as offering extra mental health support in the building.

Jim Boen with the High Desert Education Service District will be on hand at Silver Rail to help staff. Barclay called Boen, the ESD’s regional director for mental and behavioral health, a “calming presence.”

In these first days back, learning may not be the first order of business. Students have to be ready to learn, said Bend-La Pine school board Chair Amy Tatom.

“Learning doesn’t happen in someone who’s emotionally dysregulated or experiencing significant distress,” Tatom said. “Our students and our staff are entering that building at different levels of readiness.”

Barclay said she’s heard the return described as an in-service week, where staff and students ease back into education, usually after a break. There’s more time to talk and ask questions, with some learning peppered in. As days and weeks go on, learning becomes the focus again.

It’s almost like the school year is starting over again at Silver Rail. Remnants of the actual first day of school remain at the school, like a “welcome back Steam Engines” sign out front and “missed you!” in paper letters on the library wall.

Cook said the district is committed to helping Silver Rail students throughout their whole educational career, including the kindergarteners who have experienced this tragedy less than two months into their first year of school.

“We know and understand and recognize that’s our, not just our responsibility, but our want to help support them through that entire journey,” Cook said.

Support taking many forms across Bend

In the days after the shooting, viral librarian and new Reading Rainbow host Mychal Threets offered on social media to visit Bend, if they wanted him to. They accepted, and with help from Deschutes County Library, he came. Staff from the Roundabout Books and Cafe drove Threets around for two days this week, hosting storytimes at nine Bend elementary schools.

The storytime for Silver Rail was hosted at a different elementary school. Threets said about 20 to 30 people came.

“That was more than enough because I think it means that they needed something like a story time, a chance to come together with their classmates,” Threets said. He saw kids running around having fun. They told Threets about their favorite books.

“It was just extremely emotional just because of what happened, but I love that you couldn’t necessarily see those emotions in the kids. They were just there for the first time in a while, surrounded by people who truly love them.”

Though Silver Rail students were most directly impacted by the shooting, students and staff throughout the district have been affected.

All Bend-La Pine schools closed for several days after the shooting. As students and staff returned, Mountain View High School teacher Trevor Tusow said he felt some of the comforting feelings McCart mentioned in the “normalcy” of being back in the classroom.

“I almost feel a little bit guilty that I have the opportunity to return to some normalcy, understanding that some people’s normal is forever changed,” Tusow said.

At Mountain View, Tusow teaches criminal justice and history. That first day back, he asked his criminal justice students if anyone had questions about the shooting or the aftermath. No one raised their hand.

The next day, he shared an update in the case with the class. One student had a question. After that first question, Tusow said the floodgates opened, and he spent about 30 minutes of that class fielding questions.

“They were incredibly caring in their questions, but there was a lot of curiosity about what will happen in this situation, and then what are we doing to make sure that these things are less likely to happen,” Tusow said.

“You could almost feel a little bit of tension come off. They were like, ‘Oh this is a safe place to be able to ask questions.’”

Some steps toward healing may happen in individual classrooms like Tusow’s. Some are meant to be bigger and longer lasting.

Part of the district’s long-term plan to support the local community is a resiliency hub, a place where families can get connected to services and resources beyond the school district.

“The vision for that hub will be that it’s a long-term solution to help support the entire community in their recovery from this event,” Cook said. “If we do that well as a community, that hub will exist for many years to come.”

Fear — and resilience — remain

Janelle Chance used to teach third grade at Silver Rail. Now, she’s a different kind of teacher, an instructor and equine specialist at Healing Reins, which has offered support for students across the district through equine therapy.

This week, she started working with groups of Silver Rail students, including a student who normally was in the class the shooter was in. On the day of the shooting, Chance talked to the student’s mom, who said the student was in an adjacent, different classroom finishing up some other work.

“I asked her, ‘Are you planning on going back tomorrow?’ and she said, ‘We’re going to try,’” Chance recalled.

The district was unable to share any enrollment updates, but the district is allowing Silver Rail families to transfer their kids to a different district elementary school. Some are doing that. Others are deciding to homeschool their children.

Leaders at the Bend-La Pine district have hosted listening sessions and a school board meeting, where they’ve heard a range of responses from local families.

Tatom, the school board chair, has heard from people in the last month who are supportive and grateful for the district’s response to the shooting. Others expressed frustration that schools were closed. One Silver Rail parent at this week’s board meeting told the board they had failed.

“I’m a primary care provider, so acknowledging that when people have experienced trauma, often it comes out in big emotions, and people need a place to direct their anger,” Tatom said. “If that needs to be directed at me, I can take that. I can take that on for my community.”

Staff aren’t all coming back either.

Barclay, the Bend teachers union president, said of the 30 Silver Rail staff members who are part of BEA, she estimates five are looking at long-term leave. She expects others to take days off throughout the year. BEA negotiated an extra 20 days for Silver Rail employees to use.

“I think that’s been a relief to some folks just to know that stability is there and they can count on those 20 days as a base to build their own healing plan off of,” Barclay said.

Educators across the district with children at Silver Rail have an additional 10 days they can use if their children need support.

Barclay called the Silver Rail teachers the “strongest, most brave people” she’s met.

“To be processing a tragedy like this, and come to the conclusion that they want to go back and reclaim their school and their space, where they’re having to return without colleagues and without students that were there before, it’s just absolutely incredible,” Barclay said.

“To see them come together to do that is amazing.”

OPB reporter Jen Baires contributed to this story.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/11/12/silver-rail-reopen-bend-oregon/