Prior to firmware 2.0.5, the algorithm used to do what your rainbird controller does: when rain sensor is activated, it shuts off the valves, and then when the rain sensor is deactivated the valves will be open again, assuming the program hasn’t terminated. So if you would like the same way, and don’t need the ‘per-station ignore rain’ feature available in firmware 2.0.5, you can flash the controller back to firmware 2.0.4.
Alternatively, instead of connecting the rain sensor to the rain sensor port, you can connect the rain sensor in series with the COM (common) wire. This way when rain is activated, it will electrically break the COM wire, but will not terminate the programs. This is a more common way to connect rain sensor on controllers which don’t have dedicated rain sensor port (and hence have no software handling of rain sensor).