In the wake of May鈥檚 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, rural school leaders in Eastern Oregon met on Monday in Pendleton to review their security measures.
About 200 school officials, police officers and mental health professionals from across Umatilla, Morrow and Union counties piled into a conference room at the Pendleton Convention Center to figure out how to prevent a public safety crisis in their community.
The event was co-organized by the InterMountain Education Service District, which held a similar conference in 2016 following the mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg.
鈥淭his is the plague we have in America,鈥� IMESD Superintendent Mark Mulvihill said in an interview.
Mulvihill said there鈥檚 been a significant amount of turnover in school administrations since the last conference, and leaders wanted to organize the event to assure the community they were doing everything possible to keep schools in Oregon鈥檚 rural communities safe.
At the conference, school resource officers shared their stories of near misses.
Union County Sheriff Cody Bowen, a former school resource officer, recalled an incident in La Grande where a planned school shooting was 鈥渃ommon knowledge鈥� among students and wasn鈥檛 broken up until a student came forward to administrators the day before it was supposed to happen.
鈥淭here鈥檚 quite a bit of stuff going on, indicators that we missed leading up to this, because the left hand wasn鈥檛 talking to the right hand,鈥� he said.
George Shimer said he鈥檚 been a school resource officer in Boardman for seven years but was a teacher before that. He said recent school shooting threats from a student circulated among dozens of students before someone tipped him off.
鈥淭hat threw me off afterwards,鈥� he said. 鈥淥ne of those students was actually in my introduction to criminal justice class previously.鈥�
The presenters went over ways to connect students with mental health resources, whether school districts should have universal language for lockdowns and SafeSchools, an app that allows students to report safety concerns anonymously.
School officials hoped to use these tools not only to prevent school shootings, but also suicides, bullying and custodial disputes between parents.
Law enforcement at the conference shied away from discussing gun policies, however..
When one attendee asked what the group should do about access to firearms, Pendleton Police Chief Chuck Byram said the Oregon Legislature was responsible for the issue.
鈥淲e were born in a revolution,鈥� he said. 鈥淭here鈥檚 billions of guns out there just in our country alone. How do you get all those back? The barn door鈥檚 open. How do you close it now? "
, Americans own nearly 400 million guns. among large, wealthy nations.
Byram said gun owners could focus on how to keep their firearms safely stored and out of the reach of children. In a later interview, he said he wanted school officials and local law enforcement to pay attention to the 鈥渞ed flags鈥� that often predate school shootings.
鈥淒o we have the magic answer for any of this?鈥� he said 鈥淣o, because it keeps happening again and again and again. All we can try to do is prevent it.鈥�
As the conference broke for lunch, several members of the audience didn鈥檛 seem like they wanted to wait another six years before the next gathering to discuss the topic. Multiple members asked the IMESD to organize the event on a regular basis.
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