When a gunman walked into a school in Bend, Oregon, last month, he didn’t shoot at just any classroom. He fired into a space filled with Disabled children. Some reports have indicated the shooter was a former student in the so-called special education system himself. The shooter killed three students and one teacher and injured several other people.
In the increasingly dangerous U.S. school system, such shootings have become routine. But this shooting in particular has multiple disability-related threads worth exploring. Schools are not safe spaces for Disabled students in more ways than one.
The Background
The education system is not kind to Disabled kids. During President Donald Trump’s second term, the U.S. Department of Education has been gutted, including by rolling back enforcement of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Meanwhile, the effectiveness of special education varies from one jurisdiction to the next, and finding support for students with individualized education programs, or IEPs, is nothing short of a full-on battle.
When the kids sat down at Silver Rail Elementary School that day, they were already learning within a system that isn’t suited to their needs. For example, while graduation data for Disabled students tends to be outdated, a 2024 analysis found that Disabled students’ graduation rates lag well behind those of their nondisabled peers and students from other marginalized backgrounds.
However, the shooting in Bend spotlights a darker reality that data can’t always explain. Disabled kids are often left behind in times of emergency. Fire evacuation plans for Disabled students on upper floors often boil down to hiding behind a door and waiting. Active shooter exercises rarely include specialized evacuation plans for Disabled students, yet another way in which society sacrifices Disabled children. We don’t have full details on how the shooting unfolded, but all signs point toward a teacher who wasn’t able to enact whatever safety plan was in place and did the best she could given the circumstances. There are efforts to reduce these risks in similar situations — from advocates to researchers — but these efforts are nowhere close to nationwide, despite existing national guidance.
The reaction from both the school district and the media after this unconscionable event has also been predictable. Therapists have been dispatched, police presence has increased, and the person who killed the shooter has been the subject of intense focus. Perhaps because it’s in the seemingly liberal haven of Oregon, or because Disabled students were involved, or because people are just tired of schools not being safe places, some parents have already called out the increased police presence for being performative.
Here, too, there is an under-discussed disability conversation to be had. The school-to-prison pipeline heavily shapes the lives of many Disabled students, deaths caused by police are a core concern (particularly among autistic communities), and research indicates that a disproportionate number of incarcerated people are Disabled. States are even torn on how — or whether — to quantify how Disabled someone must be in the eyes of the law to be exempt from execution. In court, it’s a common strategy for defendants to appear in a wheelchair, even if they don’t typically use one, to try to win a lighter sentence. In doing so, defendants and their lawyers exploit the perceptions we already hold of Disabled people for their own ill-gotten gain.
None of this excuses the shooter’s actions, of course, and reports indicate that he may have been radicalized online, like so many who commit these crimes. No motive for the shooting has been made public, and researchers have long studied the connection between mental health and mass shootings. Still, as the aftermath unfolds, it’s reasonable to assume that disability will become a core part of the public discourse surrounding the shooting. For some outlets, it already is.
What Can We Learn?
There are multiple lessons we can take from this shooting, even though it happened only weeks ago.
First is that Disabled people can be monstrous, too. One problem activists raise with inspiration porn is that it trains the public to see Disabled people only as saints and sufferers, a framing that makes us unusually quick to excuse behavior we’d otherwise question. The cost of that falls on everyone, including the Disabled person who never got the help they needed.
Second, we need to talk about the full scope of Disabled experience and the lack of emergency protections in schools. A teacher tackled the shooter, it appears, and we don’t know whether any evacuation plan on the planet could have prevented this tragedy, but we do know that Disabled people are underserved at the best and worst of times.
Lastly, there are still folks who are willing, in the midst of grief and fear, to talk about these systems with a deep level of care and consideration. As one parent told Oregon Public Broadcasting, referring to the shooter: “We let him down…There were things that he needed that he didn’t get. And by letting him down, we’ve then let all of the rest of these kids down.”
Or, as one former teacher at the school told OPB, “I think it is the most horrific moment of what can happen when kids lose connection, and when kids don’t have the resources and support that they need…We all have responsibility in making sure that we are following these kids and supporting them all the way through in all of the different ways. And we have to work together so that it doesn’t happen again.”
There are many uncertainties after an event like this, but one thing is certain: A full and thorough accounting of how Disabled students are supported — and talked about — could go a long way on the road to safety for all students.
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