Published 9:13 am Friday, October 23, 2026

Oregon voters have agreed to school bonding measures to pay for secure entries, cameras and fences to mitigate the risk of a tragedy like the Silver Rail shooting.

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…