By Kristine Thomas
As a mother, Jodi Drescher knows there is no way to recapture a moment in her children’s life – once it’s gone, it’s gone.
As the principal of Silverton High School she has frequently reminded her colleagues to put their families first.
It’s time, she wrote in an email to colleagues, to listen to her own advice.
At its June 8 meeting, the Silver Falls School board granted Drescher’s request to be reassigned from principal to assistant principal. The board also unanimously selected Mark Hannan to take over as principal at Silverton High School, beginning July 1. He is currently an assistant principal.
“The desire for this change stems from the transition all families experience,” Drescher wrote. “As my older girls graduate and move on to college experiences, my son is beginning high school next year.”
For the most part during her five years as principal at SHS Drescher said she has been fortunate in scheduling her supervision and activities around her children’s activities and school events —sometimes attending Silverton events after attending her children’s events.
She vividly recalls a week this past year where she went three full days and four nights without seeing her 14-year-old son, Danny, awake. He will be a freshman at St. Paul High School in the fall.
“It makes me physically ill to consider the possibility that when my son makes his first appearance in a high school football game, I will be somewhere else, watching someone else’s children,” she said. “The Silverton community deserves to have their principal present at home football games and activities — I’m not sure I can do them justice.”
Realizing she can’t be in two places at one time and sincerely believing in doing what’s best for everyone involved led Drescher to ask to be reassigned as an assistant principal. She knows this move is a detour from her professional goals, but that just means it might take a little longer to reach them, she said.
Her decision to make the switch came to doing what was best for her family and herself.
“This will afford me the opportunity to play a more active role in the lives of my husband and my children,” she said.
Superintendent Craig Roessler told the board he believes Silverton High School’s staff, students and parents can benefit from the talents of the rearranged administrative team.
Hannan, who graduated in 1984 from SHS and attended Eugene Field, Robert Frost and Mark Twain, said it has been his goal since he began teaching to become an administrator.
“It has been since I came back to SHS eight years ago that I really started focusing on one day becoming the principal,” he said.
Hannan has spent much of the last year coordinating the completion of the Pine Street Campus, where he also was the assistant principal.
He is looking forward to opening the new building and building on the traditions created at Schlador Street.
“I think the community has given a wonderful gift to the students of the Silver Falls School District and it’s my goal to make sure we utilize this gift to its fullest potential,” he said.
Drescher said philosophically she, Hannan and assistant principal Dandy Parsons are “all on the same page.”
“We are intent upon working toward the end goal of student success,” she said.
