Page 4
August 02, 2023
Nearly a Third of Oregon
Superintendents are New
Photo courtesy of Gresham Police Department.
Allowing Police to
Respond Quicker!
Gresham Makes
History With
Drones As First
Responders
The Gresham Police Department has
become the first law enforcement agen-
cy in the State of Oregon to implement
the Drones as First Responders Program
(DFR) and the sixteenth law enforcement
agency in the Country. The program had
its inaugural launch on Friday, July 14,
and will continue as a pilot program de-
pending on staffing levels.
"Without the additional staffing the
Gresham Safety Levy would have pro-
vided our department, we have to find
innovative ways to be more efficient
while keeping our community safe,” said
Gresham Police Chief Travis Gullberg.
The drones dedicated to the DFR pro-
gram launch from Gresham City Hall and
are deployed specifically for exigent cir-
cumstances which could include but are
not limited to, searching for lost or miss-
ing persons and crimes in progress. The
drones have the ability to provide critical
information to ground personnel. It is
important to note that the drones do not
record video unless it is necessary for the
collection of evidence. The drones deploy
with their cameras at a 15-degree angle,
meaning, they are aimed straight ahead in
order to better locate the scene and they
return to City Hall at the same angle.
The City of Chula Vista, California,
which implemented DFR in 2018, has
recorded the average response time for a
drone to a priority one call as three-point
nine minutes and the patrol unit on scene
as six-point six minutes. For priority
two calls, they recorded drones arriving
on scene within an average of five-point
three minutes and patrol units on scene
within ten-point one minutes.
The Gresham DFR program allows an
officer to get visuals a situation in approx-
imately two minutes, which can be almost
half the amount of time of a patrol unit
response.
“Utilizing the Drones as First Respond-
ers program allows our police to respond
faster to our community’s needs while
keeping our officers safe,” said City Man-
ager Nina Vetter. “Drones have the abili-
ty to arrive at a scene within a couple of
minutes, which allows our officers to have
their eyes on an incident in record time
and can potentially reduce the amount of
personnel needed.”
With the failure of the Gresham Safety
Levy in May 2023, the City of Gresham is
leveraging technology in order to contin-
ue the efforts of the Safe Gresham initia-
tive developed last year.
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Districts struggling
to hire and retain
superintendents over
the past years
(AP) School districts across Oregon
have struggled to hire and retain super-
intendents in the last five years, accord-
ing to the Coalition of Oregon School
Administrators. The job has frequently
become contentious, as school leaders
handle the continuing impacts of the
COVID-19 pandemic and face tensions
from school boards, Oregon Public
Broadcasting reported on Wednesday.
“We’ve seen an incredible amount of
turnover,” said Krista Parent, the coali-
tion’s deputy executive director. Sixty of
Oregon’s 197 school districts have su-
perintendents in the first or second year
of the job, she said. Twenty-five districts
will have new superintendents this year,
including two of the states largest: Sa-
lem-Keizer and Hillsboro. Nyssa, Crook
County, Jordan Valley and Oakridge
school districts were still seeking a su-
perintendent as of this week.
Parent, who is a former National Su-
perintendent of the Year, said Oregon
and the entire country are in “crisis
mode” for school district leadership.
According to her data, Oregon has had
154 new superintendents in the last five
years. Some districts, including Corbett
and Woodburn, have had three or more
leaders in that time.
Parent said a natural exodus of super-
intendents who were retiring or aging
out of the system was expected, as has
happened in other fields. But turnover at
this level was unexpected — exacerbated
by lasting impacts from the COVID-19
pandemic and school boards’ recent in-
creased politicization, she said. Having
constant change in the superintendent’s
office often leads to instability in a school
district, she said.
But Parent said more is needed, includ-
ing requiring training for school board
members and superintendents about how
to work together. With current tensions
between elected school board members
and superintendents high in some places,
that training could lead to better relation-
ships, she said.
She said bringing in leaders who reflect
a district’s diverse student populations
also needs work. According to Parent’s
data, only nine of the superintendents in
216 school districts or education service
districts in Oregon are people of color,
and only 49 are women.
“You don’t just jump to the superin-
tendency. You’re an assistant principal
and a principal and a curriculum director
and so on,” she said. “And so, if we’re
really going to change the system, we
have to start here and get that pipeline to
a place of having a lot of diversity.”