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Safe Schools Central Oregon

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Measure first, grade honestly, report every October

Proposed, for board reviewBaseline by day 90; first quarterly report by month six; annual report each October

Measure first, grade honestly, report every October

Publish a two-page baseline from data that already exist by day 90, file three data requests once, commission a one-page map of what we do and what we expect it to change, grade the evidence behind every program the group funds, never claim attacks averted, and publish a short you-said-we-did report each quarter and a sourced annual report each October, with extreme risk protection order figures reported only as context.

A program that cannot show change will not survive the attention cycle, and a group that promises to prevent attacks will be judged by events it cannot control. The outcomes the public cares about most are too rare at county scale to show change in a year. So the honest design reports what the group did and the early changes it can measure, with deaths as long-run context only, and says in print what the evidence does and does not support.

Only 3 of the 16 storage programs a federal audit identified had evaluated their own effectiveness, and Oregon’s own school safety tip line, SafeOregon, says its volume measures awareness and trust rather than safety. Much of the baseline already exists: the state Student Health Survey publishes county-level results for grades 6, 8 and 11, with 2025 results posted and a data portal; Deschutes County has published a suicide trend and data report and a Healthy Schools evaluation that tracks youth behavioral health emergency visits; and combined tip counts can be requested under the state tip line statute. Two gaps need fixing now: Crook County did not take part in the 2025 survey, so it has no county results posted, and we found no county protective order counts published since 2022.

Research partners are nearby: a team at OSU-Cascades in Bend that has reported testing storage messages built with rural Central Oregon gun owners, the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) research center that studies storage and protective orders, and Portland State’s Regional Research Institute, which works with community groups on evaluation. Honest grading protects trust: the largest trial of Sources of Strength, a school peer leader program, did not find an overall reduction in attempts, and researchers still disagree about why; that belongs in print beside any program the group endorses. Publishing the results that show no change is what would make the positive ones believable.

Why we think it works

What we would do

  1. Commission a one-page map of what we do and what we expect it to change (a logic model) with the OSU-Cascades team (first choice, in Bend) or Portland State's Regional Research Institute, fixing six measures of the group's own work: devices handed off and follow-up response rate; clinicians enrolled and days from referral to first contact by town; schools with annual SafeOregon tip line training and the share of tips across the three counties with a short follow-up report filed by the school; gatherings and trainings staffed by town; volunteers active by role; directory entries verified on schedule.
  2. File three requests once, in month one: combined three-county tip counts from Oregon State Police under the state tip line statute (ORS 339.329(7)); county protective order petitions, dismissals and firearms returned from the Oregon Judicial Department's Public Records Center and the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) research center; and quarterly youth behavioral health emergency visit counts from Deschutes County Healthy Schools, as a reader of the county's own product.
  3. Ask, through the Crook County Health Department and the High Desert Education Service District (the regional agency that supports all six school districts), whether Crook County School District would administer the 2026 Student Health Survey; offer to cover costs and administrative burden; the school board decides and the group stays off the press release.
  4. Publish the two-page baseline by day 90 using multi-year rates with exact tables and years, the Deschutes County safe messaging guide applied to every figure, three-county totals only, with numbers too small to protect privacy left out, and school-level detail returned to the ESD and each superintendent.
  5. Adopt three rules in writing: never report attacks averted or deaths prevented; print Oregon State Police's own caution beside every tip count; report protective order figures only in the Advocate report, as context, with petitions, dismissals and returns together and the evidence rating from RAND, a nonprofit research organization, printed beside them.
  6. Grade only programs the group funds or endorses, using ratings from RAND or the California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse rather than the group's own judgment; share each grade with the program owner before publication; publish results that show no change.
  7. Ask OHSU or Portland State to hold the schedule for lock events and SafeOregon training, starting in different towns at different times, so the group can see whether its work made a difference rather than only report it, at little extra cost.
  8. Publish a quarterly you-said-we-did report, including quarters where nothing moved, and an annual report each October that includes a section on what the group got wrong; in year two, buy a short question set on an existing Oregon Values and Beliefs Center survey (storage practice, awareness of the storage law, trusted messengers, SafeOregon awareness; no policy-preference items) and publish the questions in advance and the full results regardless.

How we would know it is working

  • Public baseline published by day 90; annual report published each October
  • Three data requests filed in month one; each reported at day 90 as fulfilled, pending or escalated
  • Written offer to cover Crook County's 2026 Student Health Survey costs made; the district's answer reported
  • Share of supported programs with a published evidence grade (goal 100 percent)
  • Quarterly reports delivered on time, including quarters with no change to report

What could get in the way

One intermediate measure in the original proposal was protective order petitions by county. A group that counts more petitions as progress is working for court orders, whatever its identity statement says.
Protective order figures move to context only, appear in the Advocate report alone, and are reported in both directions, with dismissals and returns and RAND's rating of the evidence beside them.
If a data partner's work appears in national advocacy case studies about Deschutes County, a rural family will assume the county's numbers go to a national campaign next; lock handoff data analyzed in Portland is a familiar story.
Written data agreements that say what leaves the county and to whom; aggregate only; every table published locally first; the dataset owned locally; the OSU-Cascades team in Bend as first choice.
Pressing Crook County back into a state survey that asks students about guns at home reads as a Bend group surveying Prineville kids about their parents' guns.
The district and the county health department decide; the group funds, carries burden and stays off the press release.
Small county numbers invite misreading, survey wording changed between cycles, and an evidence grade printed beside a program a district already adopted reads as public criticism in the recovery year.
Multi-year rates with exact tables; grade only what the group funds; share every grade with the program owner first and name no district.

Who we would work with: OSU-Cascades research team, Portland State University Regional Research Institute, Oregon Health & Science University Gun Violence Prevention Research Center (evaluator only, never on materials), Deschutes County Suicide Prevention Program and Healthy Schools, Oregon State Police SafeOregon, Oregon Judicial Department, Oregon Health Authority Student Health Survey team, Crook County Health Department and Crook County School District, Central Oregon Health Council

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