It's quiet outside Skyline School. The soft sounds of children's laughter mixes easily with the music of songbirds from the surrounding fields on the edge of Portland's West Hills.

There's no hint that the K-8 school was the last place young Kyron Horman was seen before he vanished five years ago. There are no armed guards, no fingerprint checks, nothing to indicate police temporarily considered the school a possible crime scene.

But Kyron's unsolved disappearance has triggered lasting changes in security at all Portland Public Schools. It also has spurred a larger cultural shift that asks students, faculty, staff and school families to take responsibility for school safety.

At Skyline - and all the rest of the schools - that means balancing security with the goal of creating an environment where students can explore, learn and grow.

"This isn't a jail," said Skyline Principal Jill Sage. "We certainly don't want folks to feel that. We want to float all boats."

On the other hand, Sage said, visitors may be reminded of Kyron every time they're directed through the front door - now the only unlocked door to the outside in the building. They're steered away from the student library and toward the front office, where they must sign in on a school district laptop before they can receive visitor badges that they must wear at all times. The sign-in and sign-out information goes to district headquarters, where administrators can track all school visitors across the district.

If visitors look up, they may see the surveillance cameras that provide Sage and her staff with views both inside and outside the school.

They may hear announcements over the public-address system, delivering uniform messages in real time throughout the school.

If they're volunteers, they'll have to slip into the closet to pick up their photo IDs, which they must wear around their necks while on school grounds.

And if anyone strays beyond where they belong, they can expect to be intercepted and redirected by teachers, staff members and volunteers.

"We've always been vigilant," Sage said. "We know who's here and why. When someone walks down the main hall, you know them."

Before Kyron went missing, school staff members sometimes were lax about visitor badges. People of all stripes could slip into the school through any of nine exterior doors. Messages about weather-related school emergencies were delivered classroom by classroom.

But everything changed very quickly after June 4, 2010. That's when Kyron's stepmother, Terry Moulton Horman, drove the 7-year-old to Skyline for an early-morning science fair. She told authorities that she last saw him walking down the hall toward his classroom about 8:45 a.m.

He never made it there, but he wasn't reported missing until the afternoon, after his father, Kaine Horman, and stepmother discovered he wasn't on the school bus. They went to the school to find him, prompting the school secretary to call 911 at 3:46 p.m.

Kyron's disappearance prompted the largest search operation in Oregon history. No evidence of the boy has been discovered to date.

Regardless, George Weatheroy wants to prevent another student disappearance, whether it's a stranger-to-stranger kidnapping or a child snatched in a custody dispute.

A former Portland sergeant who retired after 25 years on the job, Weatheroy was hired in 2012 as the district's security director.

Since taking the post, Weatheroy has helped to develope an overall emergency plan for schools that addresses scenarios ranging from storms and gas spills to earthquakes and active shooters. In addition, each school has an individually tailored emergency plan and has been issued a flip chart that prescribes responses to various emergencies.

"But more importantly, we are actively training the staff so everybody is on the same sheet of music," Weatheroy said. "This is an ongoing process because the staff changes and the student population changes, too."

All elementary schools have been outfitted with indoor and outdoor surveillance cameras. As the high schools are rebuilt with money from the bond issue approved by voters in 2012, they also will have cameras.

Each classroom, Weatheroy said, has a VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) phone that can be used to order a lockdown or evacuation.

Some schools have campus security agents - district employees - who act as points of contact for the students. They aren't armed, but wear easily identifiable shirts or vests and carry two-way radios so they can be in instant contact with school administrators and police.

"The key, though, is everybody being responsible to keep us safe," he said. "If you see something strange, tell somebody you can trust to get the ball rolling. This includes students, teachers, staff members and parents. This is a big culture change for the district."

Weatheroy told the story of a boy who had been saying he was frustrated and angry to the point that he wanted to kill everybody. A fellow student heard him and reported it to a teacher. A subsequent investigation by police found that the boy lived with his grandfather, who had rifles, shotguns, handguns and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

The grandfather voluntarily surrendered his weapons until the boy could undergo a mental health evaluation. The incident was defused by early intervention.

Weatheroy also pointed to the shooting near Wilson High School last year when a police officer was wounded in gunfight with Kelly Vern Swoboda, who was wanted in a Clackamas County stranger-to-stranger kidnapping. Swoboda was killed.

Police were alerted to be on guard because students told a school resource officer that Swoboda's van had been suspiciously circling the school.

"That's an example of students stepping up," Weatheroy said. "In the old days, there was this idea that they didn't want to be a snitch or it wasn't their business. Now, we make sure everybody understands it's all of our business."

At Southeast Portland's Marysville School, a fast-burning fire in 2009 also helped make safety awareness part of the everyday routine.

Principal Lana Penley said when she heard the alarms, she thought it was a fire drill.

"When we went into the hall, we could see flames coming from an electrical room and soon the hallways were filled with smoke," Penley said.

Though the school didn't yet have today's emergency response plans, Penley and her staff reacted on the fly. After safely evacuating everyone to the school playground, they realized that the growing fire could cause the school's boiler to explode. So they marched everyone away to the nearby Holgate Public Library.

Today, Weatheroy said, detailed response plans could help eliminate improvisation - however creative or ultimately successful - in an emergency.

At Skyline School, where Kyron remains the inspiration for so many security measures, his disappearance no longer dominates the conversation.

"If it comes up, we talk about him," Sage said. "It's hard because the case isn't closed, but we also don't dwell on things we can't control.

"If we knew what happened, we could memorialize and move on in a different way. But if we did that now, it would be like giving up hope that he could return. We want to have hope that could happen."

-- Rick Bella

503-294-5915; @southnewshound