More than 100 of Oregon’s 197 school districts have asked voters in the past eight years to agree to local property tax increases to raise money for school safety upgrades.
That’s according to a Capital Chronicle analysis of ballot referrals to the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office, available online only through 2018, and a database of bond results provided by the Oregon School Boards Association.
In 53 of those districts, voters have said yes — sending more than $6 billion to schools for infrastructure projects that also include hundreds of millions of dollars for school modernization and security investments such as automatic locking doors, fences, gates, hardened glass windows, alarm systems and other measures meant to mitigate the risk of a tragedy like last week’s shooting at Silver Rail elementary in Bend.
A teen gunman entered the school building on the afternoon of Oct. 15 after climbing a fence and shooting through the windows of a locked side door — two security measures that slowed but did not stop him from getting into a classroom, where he then opened fire. He killed three children and a teacher before he was stopped by another teacher and an armed parent who followed the shooter inside and shot him.
Voters in the Bend-La Pine School District are among those who approved school safety spending in bond votes taken in 2017 and 2022, and Silver Rail was a beneficiary of those dollars. The school has a secure front door and shatter-proof glass vestibule where guests are vetted before being able to enter the school halls, and updated door locks among other security measures, The Bulletin reported.
“In my own experience, just about every school has a locked door and some sort of electronic doorbell, and that wasn’t the case 10 years ago,” said Oregon School Boards Association spokesperson Jake Arnold. “Pretty much every bond campaign I’ve looked at since at least 2020 mentioned safety improvements.”
Nine more school districts are asking voters in November to approve school bonding projects that include school security and safety measures. They include the Gladstone, Glide, Grants Pass, Harney County, Hillsboro, North Clackamas, Reynolds, Silver Falls and Siuslaw school districts.
Installing a single secure entrance at all school buildings is among the most common investments districts have made in recent years, Arnold said. Many schools have also invested in fences and exterior doors that can only be opened with key cards. In nearly half of all approved bonds that included safety measures, districts sought funding to replace and upgrade security cameras, which are now seen across schools from the elementary to high school level in much of the state.
Voters in Lake Oswego passed two bonds that paid for school safety upgrades in 2021 and 2025. The 2025 bond was, of the two, most centered on school safety investments, and included plans to install new secure classroom doors, hardened glass, expand the number of security cameras in district schools and upgrade its emergency communications systems. West Linn-Willsonville, Oregon City and Redmond school districts have all passed two voter-approved bonds each to cover security spending in the last eight years.
But just as home hardening against arson does not guarantee a house won’t burn down, security investments can only reduce the possibility or severity of a tragedy, school officials said.
“While no system can 100% prevent determined acts of violence, thoughtful and modern security features can help lessen the chances and the impact of terrible situations,” said Kelly McIver, a spokesperson for the Eugene School District, in an email.
McIver cautioned against the public seeing these investments as preventing a tragedy like the one at Silver Rail. Instead, people should think of them as risk reduction.
“They also can help lower the odds of more common, less dire threats like vandalism, theft and unauthorized visitors,” he said.
Voters in Eugene approved a 2018 capital bond measure that raised more than $319 million. Nearly $8.5 million of that went to school safety upgrades, including secure entry vestibules, security cameras, fencing and anti-shatter window film that is hard to break through. The district will in the next few years have invested in safety improvements at every one of its 32 instructional sites, McIver said.
2018 was among the worst years for school shootings in the U.S., according to the K-12 School Shooting Database. It was also among the worst years for mass shootings in American schools — where three or more people are killed — according to The Violence Prevention Project, the largest database of mass shootings in the U.S. run by Metro State University in Minnesota.
The number of shootings at K-12 schools in the U.S. about doubled between 2017 and 2018, going from 60 to nearly 120. The number dipped during COVID when schools were closed in most of the country and has since risen dramatically since 2021, when a record 257 incidents of shootings at K-12 schools in the U.S. occurred, according to the School Shooting Database.
A record 36 mass shooting incidents occurred in 2022, and 35 more followed in 2024, according to the Violence Prevention Project. A record number of fatalities also occurred in 2022, with 59 people killed and another 49 injured in mass shootings at schools.
So far this year, the School Shooting Database researchers have recorded 155 shootings at schools and 118 wounded or killed victims. Most school shootings occur in parking lots outside of the buildings themselves, and in front of doors before anyone ever enters. Most school shootings in the U.S. occur at high schools, and most perpetrators are former students.
Oregon Capital Chronicle
Oregon Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Julia Shumway for questions: info@oregoncapitalchronicle.com.
