SchoolCEO Winter 2024

HIGHLIGHTS: How one finalist for National Superintendent of the Year is making all students feel at home in St. Paul P OW E R E D BY A P P T EGY

WINTER 2024

California’s Amy Rovai Gregory on thoughtful and inclusive family engagement

ENROLLMENT MARKETING Guiding prospective families into your school community

THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY FOR ENROLLMENT

From awareness to advocacy and everything in between

BUILDING YOUR ENROLLMENT PAGE

How good user experience can boost your registration

CUSTOMER SERVICE FOR SCHOOLS Tips for making it right when something goes wrong

“It’s easy to get people’s attention; what counts is getting their interest.”

- A. Philip Randolph

How can you move the needle on student enrollment ?

Of all the issues weighing on school leaders’ minds, enrollment looms especially large. Even in the best of times, this crucial factor determines so much of your day-to-day work; after all, your funding depends on it.

But unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that in recent years, enrollment has become a particular pain point, especially for public schools. Before the start of the pandemic, 50.8 million of the nation’s children attended public schools; by the 2021-22 school year, that figure was down by 3%—a difference of about 1.3 million kids.

Plus, the increased momentum of school choice legislation nationwide means families have more options than ever before. As public school enrollment wavers, alternatives for families have skyrocketed. Between 2019 and 2021, charter school enrollment jumped by 7%, and the number of homeschooled students has doubled to 5 million since the pandemic began.

Each student who leaves your district is a hit to your funding—and, more importantly, a blow to the quality of education you can provide. When enrollment decreases, it’s not just your organization that suffers; it’s also the families and community who look to your district as a touchstone of their lives.

OUR TEAM

So what can you actually do about all this? There’s not just one answer, as this is a problem you’ll need to attack from multiple angles, from equity to leadership to school culture.

But we’re confident we can help you boost enrollment with strategies from the world we know best: marketing.

In this issue, we’re tackling enrollment with a framework well-known to the private sector: the customer journey. We’ll walk you through each stage of a family’s relationship with your schools, helping you craft experiences that make them want to be part of your district. Along the way, we’ll examine practical strategies from school leaders doing the work— like Minnesota’s Dr. Joe Gothard, who is providing specific cultural experiences to boost enrollment, and Dr. Rupak Gandhi, whose bold approach to doing right by students is bringing in kids from all over North Dakota.

This new year is a time for new beginnings—and families in your area might be looking for a fresh start with school.

Enrollment may well be among the most difficult issues your schools face in 2024, but with a strong strategy, you can buck the trend and bring more students into your district.

Editor: Melissa Hite Writers/Researchers: Marie Kressin, Corey Whaley VP of Marketing: Tyler Vawser Graphic Designers/Illustrators: Alex Barton, Marisol Quintanilla Operations: Barrett Goodwin

Research & External Relations Manager: Brittany Edwardes Keil Content Marketing Manager: Heather Palacios Video/Podcast Producers: Ryan McDonald, Tanner Cox

Based in Little Rock, Arkansas, Apptegy is an education technology company dedicated to helping school leaders build a powerful identity for their schools.

Learn more at apptegy.com

CONTENTS

Published by:

Vol. 6 No. 2 © 2024 by Apptegy, Inc. All rights reserved. Permission to reprint or quote excerpts granted by written request only. SchoolCEO� is published four times a year (October, January, April, and July) by Apptegy, Inc. 2201 Brookwood Dr., Suite 115, Little Rock, AR 72202. Views and opinions expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the magazine or Apptegy, Inc. Accordingly, no liability is assumed by the publisher thereof.

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School Shoutout:

45

How to Build an Enrollment Page

8

A Place to Call Home

52

Perspective:

16

Q&A: Building Connections, Building Capacity

55

Marketing for Attendance

The Customer Journey for Enrollment

60

Making It Right

Sliding Into Success This Georgia district built a school that its community is proud to champion, even if they have to wait their turn to slide.

In St. Paul, Minnesota, Dr. Joe Gothard is curbing enrollment declines by valuing his students’ unique experiences.

Amy Rovai Gregory shares her thoughts on culturally responsive family engagement.

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We’ll walk you through the process of getting and keeping students in your schools.

24 Awareness

Do prospective families in your area know your schools exist?

28 Interest

How can you make your schools stand out from the crowd?

32 Decision

How can you make enrollment as easy and welcoming as possible?

36 Retention

What are you doing to make sure families stay in your district?

40 Advocacy

How can you empower your advocates to tell your district’s story?

Your enrollment page is your best tool for providing an exceptional customer experience and offering much-needed help.

Embracing Inclusivity Dr. Rupak Gandhi shares how Fargo Public Schools is standing up for all kids with purpose and pragmatism.

Chronic absenteeism has a tremendous impact on learning. Here’s how you can spotlight the importance of showing up.

Sometimes, being proactive isn’t enough.

Here’s how to make things right when a customer service complaint occurs.

Want to read up on all you’ve missed?

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Listen to SchoolCEO’s podcast and join the conversation.

Plus, find us on social media: X/Twitter: @School_CEO LinkedIn: SchoolCEO

SCHOOL SHOUTOUT:

Sliding Into Success

By Brittany Edwardes Keil

The first day of school is always special, but in September 2023, students in Georgia’s Cottrell Elementary School were treated to the experience of a lifetime as they slid into their first day of school—literally. And it’s all thanks to their new elementary school’s defining feature: a twostory slide that ends in the school’s library.

Superintendent Dr. Rob Brown spent the new school’s opening day sitting at the bottom of the slide, welcoming students into a space where every detail had been designed for them.

Brown, who retired in December 2023 after eight years with Lumpkin County Schools, recalls the first day of school at Cottrell as one of the best days of his entire career. “I couldn’t look away from the sheer delight on their faces,” he shares.

“Every single kid who came down the slide was excited. One little girl was so giddy she couldn’t stand still.”

But while this was a new beginning for the district’s students, it was the culmination of years of hard work for the administrators and community members who had painstakingly planned each detail of the school. And for Brown, so close to retirement, it was also the capstone of eight years of strategic planning in the district.

The Foundations of a Promise Lumpkin County Schools began brainstorming the future of Cottrell Elementary when Brown, then newly appointed, worked with a committee to develop the district’s strategic plan—including their long-term facilities plan. District leadership knew they would need to replace their aging elementary school in the next few years, but they expected their community to have strong feelings about replacing a space that had served generations of elementary students.

Photos courtesy of Lumpkin County Schools supports our schools, and we all knew that strengthening our partnership would only make things better for our community over all,” Brown says.

Together, the county and district approached the owners of the land, Lynn and Mike Cottrell. The sellers were so enthusiastic that they made a donation to the district in exchange for the chance to name the new elementary school. And so, years before the students would giddily slide into their new school, Cottrell Elementary was born.

“Our old elementary school had so much going for it—it was centrally located and had a lot of tradition,” Brown explains.

“But the building was aging, and its location made it a traffic headache.” However, finding a parcel of land that would meet their needs while still being centrally located would be a challenge. Lumpkin County’s county seat, Dahlonega, is small—less than nine square miles total—and land for new development can be hard to come by.

While some residents expressed concern about changing the school’s name, Brown was quick to remind them that donations such as the Cottrells’ lightened the tax burden on the community as a whole. “It is important to us to show our community that we are careful stewards of the funds they provide us,” Brown says, “and that we are willing to think outside the box to make good things happen for our students.”

When the committee began looking for a parcel for the new elementary school, one location fit all of their needs, but it was far too expensive. Then one committee member suggested an exciting—if somewhat unique—plan. What if they partnered with the county to share the property for both district and county use?

Like most districts, Lumpkin County Schools went through rounds of community and staff input to make decisions about the new school. After consulting with teachers, they decided to build bigger classrooms so that students could spread out. They also built indoor recess rooms where students could burn off energy whenever it was too cold—or too hot—to be outside. But when it came to what elementary schoolers need in the day-to-day, Brown and his team had something else to guide them: firsthand experience.

In a lucky coincidence, the Lumpkin County government was looking for land to build a new aquatics center around the same time. That plus years of intentional partnership made the proposal an easy sell. “We have a community that really

Planning for Every Detail

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When Brown became a principal—and later a superintendent—he found himself reflecting often on his own time in the classroom. But he felt that having previous teaching experience wasn’t enough to keep him or his team rooted in what life in the classroom is like. So he implemented a policy requiring central office staff members to serve as substitutes at least once annually, reminding them what it’s like to experience Lumpkin County Schools from inside the classroom.

“When it came time to decide on the small details of the school, I used this insight to help me make decisions that could make my staff’s lives easier,” Brown tells us. “Whenever I sub, I’m always amazed at how often students ask to go refill their water bottles—so I asked the architect to put a water fountain with a dispenser in every classroom. I wanted them to have everything they needed—from sinks to wash their hands to space to spread out—without ever having to leave the room. When teachers asked for different things in their classrooms, it was easy for my cabinet to empathize with them because we had experienced the same issues while subbing in the old elementary school.”

Planning for all of these small details transformed the feeling of the school. In so many ways, it’s a building designed for children first—something that has definitely been well-received by the broader community. The school is bright and colorful and includes accents in the district’s signature purple. “During our ribbon-cutting, State Representative Chris Erwin said it was the most beautiful school he’s ever seen, and that filled our community with such pride,” Brown says.

The former superintendent views the school’s design as an 6

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extension of the district’s overall mission. “If we want to develop and empower lifelong learners, we need facilities that match,” he explains.

But while the school as a whole is designed for student success, the committee was also thoughtful about how Cottrell Elementary could serve the broader community. The school has three meeting rooms for public use, something their community has desperately needed. And since the meeting rooms are only accessible from the outside, they can be reserved without impacting the day-to-day life of the school. But still, while every civic group in the area has toured the new school, it’s not the meeting rooms that have them talking—it’s the slide.

A Slide for Everyone Because Brown started his career teaching physical education, he has a firsthand appreciation for how important movement is for the average elementary student. That knowledge made him want to design Cottrell Elementary School for the bouncy kids it would hold. So when it came time to plan the details for the school’s large library, Brown had a specific request: He wanted a slide.

Brown wanted Cottrell Elementary’s students to love their new building—and he wanted to extend that love to how they felt about reading in their new library. So he rang up the architects and made his big ask: a two-story slide starting near the classrooms and ending in the library. Brown says that while some stakeholders were bemused by the idea of an indoor slide—and worried that the extra costs associated

with the project would be hard for their community to understand—his team dove headfirst into making his vision a reality. “When you consider the millions of dollars we spent on the school, the cost of the slide is not much at all,” Brown explains. “And the wow factor it gives is worth every penny.”

While the students may be big fans of the slide, they’re not the only ones. Staff members anticipated that their community would enjoy the meeting rooms built for their use—but Brown admits that no tour is complete until all of the adults have gone down the slide. “I assure them all that it’s made for everyone, including big guys like me,” Brown jokes. “We have an 84-year-old gentleman in our community who prides himself on being the oldest person to go down the slide so far. It’s the first thing every community group asks about, and we love knowing that we really have created a space for everyone.”

“When we set out on this project, we knew that we would need our community’s support— but it feels great to know that we’re supporting our community’s growth, too.”

While the swirling purple slide may be the most noticeable and thoughtful detail in the school, Cottrell Elementary as a whole has quickly become the pride of its community. Its design also supports the district’s plans to bolster their overall enrollment growth over the next decade. When families tour Cottrell Elementary School, it is clear that their children will not only learn there, but thrive.

“Last week, I learned that one of our local employers includes pictures of our elementary school in the materials they use to recruit people from out of state,” Brown says, beaming. “When we set out on this project, we knew that we would need our community’s support—but it feels great to know that we’re supporting our community’s growth, too.”

While Brown is excited about his retirement, the story is only beginning for Cottrell Elementary and the generations of students it will nurture. The community’s new recreation and aquatics center is under construction next door and will open later this year. “There are few things more exciting for your community than opening a new school,” Brown shares.

“But Cottrell Elementary really is a testament to the amazing things that can happen when district-community partnerships are strong and people are willing to think big about how to best support kids.”

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A Place to Call Home How Dr. Joe Gothard is meeting needs and building belonging in Saint Paul Public Schools

Alma Mater All-Star Gothard began his career at his alma mater, Madison’s Robert M. La Follette High School, teaching biology and coaching football. “Gosh, I loved it,” he says. “I mean, I got to teach in one of my former classrooms. I think back now, and I’m like, Why did I ever leave that?” And truth be told, he didn’t really intend to ever leave teaching. “It was never part of my plan to become a principal, an assistant superintendent, or a superintendent,” he says. “But my home community saw something in me, and they convinced me that I could lead.”

By Melissa Hite When Dr. Joe Gothard laid eyes on the city of St. Paul, it was love at first sight—or at least something close. “I’ll never forget it,” he says. “I was driving to a meeting, and all of a sudden, I look over, and there’s the Capitol.” Growing up one state away in Madison, Wisconsin, Gothard was, as he puts it, “a capital city kid.” And looking up at Minnesota’s State Capitol building, he felt strangely at home.

Now, Gothard is in his seventh school year at the helm of Saint Paul Public Schools (SPPS) and his 30th in public education. It makes sense, really, that he went into teaching.

After all, school was one of the first places he ever felt comfortable—in his own skin or in the world around him. “It really begins with my middle school teacher, Lois Bell, the first and only Black teacher I ever had,” he tells us. Her influence was eye-opening for Gothard, the child of a white mother and a Black father. “She was able to help me confront my racial identity in a way that nobody had,” he says. “It’s a defining moment in my life.”

One of those community members was Dr. Mike Meissen, the principal who had hired him at La Follette. “Dr. Meissen saw in me an ability to have a deeper reach in the school community in terms of leadership,” he says. So when Meissen recommended he leave the classroom, take on a new role as dean of students, and start working on his master’s, that’s just what Gothard did.

From there, Gothard continued to grow and take on new challenges, all within the warm embrace of his hometown.

He worked as a middle school principal for two years—a “humbling experience,” he says—before returning to lead the school he’d graduated from. With the encouragement of two other mentors, Dr. Pam Nash and Dr. Jane Belmore, he began working toward his doctorate and superintendent certification. Then, after four years as principal at La Follette, he became the assistant superintendent of secondary schools at Madison Metropolitan School District.

Following his teacher’s example, Gothard has made a career of seeing and meeting students’ unique needs. That work has garnered attention from both local and national media, and in December, he was named a finalist for AASA’s National Superintendent of the Year. In St. Paul—the site of the nation’s first public charter school—Gothard has learned that being inclusive of all kids isn’t just the right thing to do; it’s also the best way to compete. That’s why he’s striving to create a district where any student, regardless of their background, can feel at home.

Photos courtesy of Saint Paul Public Schools

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Gothard hadn’t been in that position long before a new opportunity emerged. “The superintendent I worked for in Madison was caught in some really difficult and challenging work,” he says. “Community groups were not on the same page, and the board became divided as well.” After Gothard’s second year there, that superintendent left, leaving the top job open. “So of course,” he says, “I decided to apply.”

That would have made a great ending to the story—a hometown kid, the first in his family to go to college, becoming the superintendent in the district where he grew up. But it just wasn’t in the cards. The position went to someone else.

“I was really at a crossroads in my career,” Gothard says. “Did I want to stay and work with the new administration, or did I want to look for other opportunities?” Would he stay in the community that had raised him or move his three kids away from their home—from his home?

As Gothard puts it, “I’ve always taken the leap to learn and grow.” It was time to take the lessons he’d learned at home and bring them somewhere new.

A New Home The following year, Gothard found himself in Burnsville, Minnesota—“a place I’d never heard of,” he says. “But in looking at their district, the characteristics made me feel like this was somewhere I could go and learn and lead.” He accepted his first superintendency at Burnsville-EaganSavage School District 191, just outside of St. Paul. “I had four incredible years there,” he says, “learning how to be a superintendent, immersing myself in a new community, and doing some pretty exciting work.”

Once again, it wasn’t Gothard’s intention to leave—but opportunity came knocking. At District 191, he had quickly established himself as a transformational leader, someone who could heal divides and unify communities around a common vision. “I was in the first or second year of a new contract when the St. Paul position became available, and many people in this region really wanted me to apply,” he says. In 2017, he took the helm as superintendent of SPPS, and he’s been there ever since.

It wasn’t just the familiar feel of a capital city that drew Gothard to St. Paul. “The racial and cultural demographics of St. Paul really spoke to me,” he says. The Twin Cities metro area is well known for its cultural diversity. In fact, it’s 10

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home to the country’s largest urban population of Hmong Americans, as well as the nation’s highest concentration of Somali Americans. And the district is no different; the majority of students at SPPS are people of color. “We have over 125 languages spoken in our schools,” says Gothard. “It truly is a global school district.”

And SPPS sees their diversity for the asset it is. “The diversity does make us much, much stronger,” Gothard says. “One of our greatest strengths is the way this community embraces and manages dynamics of difference. In some places, that would be a call to divide, but that isn’t how things happen in St. Paul. We really like to come together.”

But Gothard was also attracted to the challenges his new district would present—one being enrollment. “St. Paul is the birthplace of public charter schools, so there are choices here,” he says. “There are about 20,000 school-aged children in the city who do not attend Saint Paul Public Schools, and a large percentage of them attend public charter schools.” To this day, one of Gothard’s primary concerns is making sure SPPS is a place any student can call home.

Innovating for the WINN As he looks back on his time in St. Paul so far, a few key victories stand out in Gothard’s mind. One of these successes began to take shape during a time of deep hardship: the COVID-19 pandemic. In November 2021, SPPS received more than $200 million in ESSER funds thanks to the American Rescue Plan. “Our systems were not built to take in that kind of money,” Gothard says. “We were not

going to be able to do with that money what we’d always done—so there was an opportunity to do things differently.”

real-time decisions to either add to, support, or stop those initiatives,” says Gothard. “It’s been really effective.”

For Gothard, “different” meant creating an Innovation Office at SPPS, “a brand-new team with new eyes, new procedures, new protocols,” he explains. “This team of specialists could implement strategies, measure them, and report our successes back to the community.”

So is WINN actually working? The data says yes. According to scores from the 2021-22 school year, WINN students— especially second and third graders—are showing great progress. Gothard has seen this growth firsthand, observing in classrooms and reading with students himself. “It’s one of the most successful strategies I’ve seen in my career,” he says. “It’s one of the things I’m most proud of.”

Now, the Innovation Office oversees more than 50 strategic initiatives aimed at addressing long-term outcomes for SPPS students. Each aligns to one of the six focus areas outlined in the district’s strategic plan, from “Systemic Equity” to “Safe Schools.” “We have project charters. We have teams that monitor progress. We have teams that are meeting and reviewing data cycles,” Gothard explains. “Through the Innovation Office, we’re determining whether or not our funding is meeting the goals of the various initiatives.”

Perhaps the most successful of these initiatives is their science of reading program, WINN—short for “What I Need Now.” Like so many districts nationwide, SPPS saw dramatic drops in state reading test scores during and following the pandemic; in 2022, 50% of the district’s students saw declines in reading scores or remained below grade level.

So the district has pulled together a cohort of 72 educators with expertise in reading instruction. These WINN teachers join every reading class in the district to provide support for students who need it—all during their regular class time. This way, classroom teachers get a little extra help, and students don’t have to be pulled out of class for reading intervention.

“You wouldn’t even know during flexible reading groups that some students are receiving extra support from a teacher,” says Gothard. “That makes me feel so good from an equity lens, because our students aren’t stigmatized, and they’re not missing the social interactions that their peers are having.” As a result, 20% of the district’s early grade students are getting reading help through WINN. But even more unique than the district’s reading program is the accountability plan created by their Innovation Office.

Through a public dashboard on the SPPS website, anyone can easily see how much funding the district is allocating to each strategic initiative—including WINN—and how successful they’ve been so far. This doesn’t just hold the district accountable for how it spends its money; it also allows SPPS to make changes in response to data. “We’re making

Thanks to this data, SPPS will have great justification for continuing to fund WINN work even after ESSER funds run out in September 2024. “This is working,” says Gothard. “And because of the progress monitoring that they’ve been able to do, I can say to our board and our community, We’re going to continue this strategy, and here’s why. Here’s the data that supports it.”

A Place of Pride Another highlight of Gothard’s career at SPPS came just a few months ago, with the opening of the district’s brandnew East African Elementary Magnet School. The school, open to grades pre-K through fifth, incorporates the diverse cultures and languages of the East African diaspora into its regular instruction. It’s the first of its kind in the nation.

Why an East African school? “We listened to our families when they said what they wanted for their children,” Gothard says. “Through our research, we understood that there were enough families in St. Paul who wanted this type of educational experience.”

About 7.5% of St. Paul students are of East African descent—but many families had been leaving the district for charter schools that catered to their specific cultures, contributing to declining enrollment. “I want our school district to be the destination choice for families in our area,” says Gothard. “It’s a shame that families would have to hop on a bus and go across town—or even leave our city—for an experience that we could offer right here.”

For months, a task force made up of staff and community members had been discussing the possibility of opening an East African school, and in 2023, the time seemed right.

Low enrollment had forced SPPS to close or merge a few schools, leaving multiple buildings empty. Plus, the district’s own research indicated that the audience for such a school existed. “We identified the right leader,” Gothard says—Dr. Abdisalam Adam, a 27-year veteran of SPPS and a prominent leader in the Somali community. Teachers who’d served on the task force were ready and willing to join the new school’s staff, and families were enthusiastic about the idea. “It became really clear to me that we were ready for the school,” says Gothard.

“We wanted to create a place of pride for our East African families, where they could come together and see their children learning their languages and cultures as part of their school experience.”

At the start of the 2023-24 school year, the East African Elementary Magnet School opened its doors to 260 kids—a number that exceeded the school’s initial enrollment goal.

About 80% of those children attended a school outside of SPPS the year before. The promise of the school drew them in, but it’s the experience within its walls that will determine whether they stay.

That experience hinges not just on academic rigor, but on the school’s understanding and celebration of the distinct cultures of its students. “It’s incredibly diverse,” Gothard says. “Sometimes we get such a narrow perspective of what a region means, but from language to customs, there’s a lot of different cultures within the East African community.” The magnet school focuses on the cultures of nine countries— Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda—as well as six East African languages.

And the school’s students see themselves reflected in more than just the curriculum. While the staff is diverse overall, about one-third are East African. All those years ago, Gothard saw something of himself in Ms. Bell; now, these students will see themselves in their teachers.

“The East African school is open to any student,” Gothard clarifies. “A student does not have to be of East African descent to attend. But we wanted to create a place of pride for our East African families, where they could come together and see their children learning their languages and cultures as part of their school experience.” In other words, a place where students and their families could feel at home.

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Leading and Listening When asked about his leadership style, Gothard replies imply, “I’m a good listener.” Never content to rest on his laurels, the superintendent is constantly trying to deepen his understanding of what SPPS students need—and that means listening.

This has been the through line of Gothard’s three decades in education—meeting needs, improving experiences, making SPPS a place students can call home. Ms. Bell gave him that, and now he’s paying it forward. “There’s nothing like a school community that can really see all of its students,” he says. And in St. Paul, that’s exactly the kind of community he’s building.

Last spring, following an emergency at one of the district’s high schools, Gothard decided to convene a meeting with ninth through twelfth graders from across the district. “For nine full days, we bussed students to a community center here in the city, and I spent the entire day engaged with them,” he says. “It was by far the most beneficial thing I ever did.”

Given the context, Gothard expected to mainly hear his students’ safety concerns. “And safety came up, don’t get me wrong,” he says. “But their experiences as students, as individuals, as a community came up far more. Students wanted to be heard. They wanted me to know what their days are like, what they’re facing, what they experience, what they’d like to see in their schools.”

The conversations were, in a word, eye-opening. “It was really the researcher and the human in me connecting with our students, trying to understand how I can ensure that the experiences we’re offering are what they need,” he says.

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By Marie Kressin

Building Connections,

Building Capacity A Q&A with Amy Rovai Gregory on culturally responsive family engagement

Like so many educators, Amy Rovai Gregory grew up knowing she wanted to work in schools. But as a child, she did more than just play school with the other kids in her apartment complex. She held pretend open houses—making sure every family got an invitation—so that she could share the work her “students” had been doing. “My mom laughs all the time,” Rovai Gregory tells us. “She’ll say I’ve been doing family and community engagement work since the age of 6.”

For the last 24 years, Rovai Gregory has worked in California’s San Juan Unified School District, holding several different positions—including teacher, English learner instructional specialist, and principal. Today, she’s the district’s

director of family engagement and partnership development, extending her passion for community work far beyond a single apartment complex.

San Juan Unified School District serves nearly 40,000 students at 68 school sites. Because the nearby refugee welcome center offers a safe landing place to incoming immigrant families, a significant portion of the district’s families are new to the country—and to the school system. In her role, Rovai Gregory has learned a lot about engaging families from a variety of backgrounds. The way she sees it, an asset mindset is key to building the kinds of relationships necessary for getting—and keeping—students in the classroom.

Q A Amy Rovai Gregory

Q A

How can family and community engagement impact enrollment and attendance?

It’s important for school districts to get to know the students and families they serve—their cultures, languages, family structures, backgrounds, and more. That’s exactly what our Family and Community Engagement team strives to do each day. We serve as the conduit between schools, families, and community partners, and we help build the capacity and the connections that can impact enrollment and attendance.

So when we talk about building connections and capacity, a big part of how we do that is by looking at our school communities from an asset mindset instead of a deficit mindset. Our goal is to look at strengths within the community.

What are the skills, knowledge, and cultures our students and families are bringing to us? What physical assets are available in the community?

What are the associations, institutions, and agencies that also serve the families within our school communities? And how can we work together to build the capacity of our families and community partners while developing the kinds of relationships and trust that get—and keep— families connected to our schools?

Can you give an example of an initiative that has done this work effectively?

Our Neighborhood Learning Project is a great example. It stems from work we did at Greer Elementary earlier in my career. My vice principal at the time, Kate Hazarian, had the idea of expanding our family resource outreach into local apartment complexes—and so the idea of the Neighborhood Learning Project was born.

Now, the project’s goal is to build capacity within neighborhoods by helping school sites asset map their communities and then leverage the strengths they identify. Our school sites identify locations where families are experiencing the greatest barriers. Then, teachers and staff actually go out to those locations. By meeting families where they are, staff can provide home learning resources and build relationships in order to help families recognize that they’re valued partners in their children’s education.

Taking the time to asset map their school communities better situates our staff to partner with the district departments and community agencies who can best provide families with their most-needed resources. For example, one neighborhood might have a public library within walking distance—that’s an asset within that community. We’ve had schools organize events in the parking lots of high-population apartment complexes and invite the library to come and give out library cards right on the spot. Then, families have the capacity to access books and other resources themselves.

The idea is to establish community partners— that’s the connection piece—in order to provide access and resources to families, which is the capacity-building piece. The more we can build the capacity of our families while connecting them to our teachers, schools, district, and community, the better. That’s how we build trusting partnerships with our families, which in turn help our students feel safe and valued so that they want to come to school every day.

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Q A

What other initiatives have impacted enrollment and attendance?

One of our recent achievements is the Family and Community Engagement Mobile—or the FACE Mobile. We used some remaining COVID relief dollars to secure a paratransit bus that would be accessible to all families, including those who might need a ramp to get on board.

Then, we designed it with the idea that it’s not just a “free mobile.” Yes, all the things we have on board—like school supplies, books, and food—are available to families at no cost, but our goal is to build the capacity of our families.

So we also give out flyers and other resources that help educate them on how to connect with their schools or community agencies in order to access support.

Part of what makes the FACE Mobile so impactful to our enrollment efforts is the onboard technology bar. The FACE Mobile has Wi-Fi, so when it pulls up, families can log in and access the hotspot or use the Chromebooks we have on board. If they need to enroll their children in school—or even apply for a job or print out a resume—we help them do that.

Photos courtesy of San Juan Unified School District 18

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Q A

Could you share a bit about San Juan Unified’s cultural brokers?

We use the term “cultural broker” to mean a specific person who represents the culture of a community. Our cultural brokers aren’t unique to our district but also aren’t part of a specific organization. They are usually hired from within the local community, and they are very knowledgeable not only about the languages of those we serve, but also about the cultures, backgrounds, and experiences that many of our families are coming to us with.

For example, many of our district’s school community resource assistants and bilingual instructional assistants are cultural brokers because they are actual parents who live within the community. They speak the same language as a certain group; know the traditions, cultures, strengths, and challenges of that group; and may have even had a similar experience as them—such as fleeing a war-torn country and immigrating to the U.S. Having these cultural brokers available really helps build trust with our families. They’ve got someone who looks like them, talks like them, and knows what they’ve been through who can help explain the American school system.

In the past, we’ve had our cultural brokers from the district’s incredible Newcomer Support Team present at the Enrollment Center when families first visit. We like to do that because some of our families, especially those who are new to the United States, don’t know what to expect. We want to have someone there who can help them with the differences between where they came from and what it’s like here.

Q A

What do culturally responsive family engagement initiatives look like?

There’s a lot about the school enrollment process that many families aren’t aware of.

That’s especially true if they’re new to the district, they’re immigrants or refugees, they’ve had interrupted schooling due to the pandemic, or they’re experiencing challenges that prevent them from accessing district communications.

It’s important that school districts learn about the backgrounds and cultures of the families we serve so that we can address barriers that may impact enrollment and attendance—whether those barriers have to do with language, cultural norms, technology access, or anything else.

For example, when my kids first went to school, families went to their neighborhood schools and enrolled in person there. We don’t do that anymore, but a lot of times, families aren’t aware of that. Plus, they may not have a phone, access to a computer, or any other way of receiving the information that we’re sending out about enrollment.

That’s why it’s up to districts and school communities to find innovative ways to address the needs of families by making both the enrollment process and attendance policies visible and accessible. That might include things like proactively working with community agencies and organizations to share early enrollment information. We’ll post things at pediatricians’ offices, libraries, laundromats— really anywhere within San Juan Unified’s boundary that our families may visit frequently.

It’s important to think beyond just putting up a flyer in the window of our schools. We need to ask where our families are going. How do we meet them where they already are? That really is the thread through all this: It’s about meeting families where they are.

Q A

Why is it important for enrollment and attendance initiatives to be culturally responsive?

Cultural responsiveness is also about allowing students and families to see themselves represented. Our communications team is phenomenal. They’re great about making sure that we represent everyone in the positive stories we highlight. We also want to have posters and pictures that honor our diversity. We want to have a library of books filled with characters who have backgrounds similar to our students’.

Those are all ways to meet the diverse needs of students and families—because it’s not just about wanting them to choose your district. It’s about creating an environment of inclusivity and belonging. The truth is that when students feel included, they feel safe. And when they feel included and safe, they are excited to come to school.

Q A

What advice would you give to districts that have fewer resources to devote to family engagement?

Our department often returns to this quote: “Start where you are; use what you have; do what you can.” Before we had the FACE Mobile, we started with a table and a pop-up tent. It’s just thinking through what you can do with the resources you have to help build capacity.

We’ve talked about building the capacity of our families, but it’s about building the capacity of our staff, too. We recently started a digital resource library that all of our school staff across the district can access in Google Drive, with folders organized by different resources.

So let’s say a teacher knows of a student whose family is facing eviction. There’s a folder for housing they can select, and then all they have to do is print out a flyer with information to give to them. Your enrollment and attendance policies should be readily available, too. Your staff can’t know everything about everything, so you have to make information easily accessible.

Q A

What small things could districts start doing tomorrow to better support students and families?

Again, it’s about thinking through what’s manageable for you and your staff. What’s available to you, and how can you be strategic in your implementation? I’ll give you an example. When I was a principal, our school was struggling with behavior challenges during unstructured times like recess. We didn’t have a lot of people or a lot of money, so the question became: How can we leverage our community partners?

We started by bringing a couple of tables outside during recess so volunteers could do art projects and enrichment activities with the kids.

From there, it developed over time. One of the most engaging things we ever did was welcome a new community partner, Cypher Hip-Hop,

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to our campus. Cypher Hip-Hop played music and set up a little dance floor during recess and lunch, and—because music is so universal— we had kids from all different backgrounds participating. They danced together and learned how to use sound system equipment, how to write and read lyrics, and how to engage with an audience.

That particular activity was so popular that we decided to only do it on Fridays—the day with the lowest attendance at our school. So what started as a behavior intervention turned into an attendance strategy. We didn’t need any additional staff or funding or anything like that. It was just about being strategic.

In this role, part of my mission each day is to help all our school sites strategically implement innovative and effective ways to support our students and keep them in our classrooms.

I even consider it part of my job to help other districts, too. We’re all in this together. Sometimes, districts feel pressured to hold their cards close, but that’s not what education should be about.

So at the end of the day, we all have to do whatever we can to create systems that are equitable and inclusive—because these are all our students. These are all our families.

Nearly every aspect of a district’s operations, from staffing to program offerings, stems from one key factor: enrollment. After all, in most cases, your enrollment numbers determine your funding—and your funding determines just about everything else.

Enrollment is a complex problem that can’t be solved with a simple answer, but one strategy can help: the customer journey.

The customer journey refers to the series of steps customers—or, in your case, families— move through as they learn more about an organization or brand. Applied to enrollment, it tells the story of how families join your district and how your happiest families become advocates for your schools.

THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY

for Enrollment

This model is a good fit for schools for a few reasons. For one, it’s extremely customercentric. At each step, you’re focused on what families are feeling and experiencing. And unlike other marketing models, the customer journey continues after someone makes a purchase— or, in your case, enrolls. After all, a family’s journey with your organization isn’t over once they enroll their child in your district; in fact, at that point, it’s just beginning. Their experiences moving forward will determine whether they stay in your schools or go elsewhere.

Many organizations have their own approaches to the customer journey, but for our purposes, we’ll focus on five main phases: Awareness, Interest, Decision, Retention, and Advocacy.

Foreword by Heather Palacios

AWARENESS INTEREST

Like the name implies, you’ve probably piqued a family’s interest by the time they arrive at this stage of the journey. Maybe they’re new to your area, or they have a child just reaching school age. Perhaps they’re unhappy with their current district. Whatever a family’s reason may be, when they’re in the Interest phase, they are actively comparing schools to find the best fit.

DECISION

The Decision phase is a critical moment in the customer journey; at this point, families are deciding to enroll their child in your district. However, the decision isn’t official until they’ve submitted their last registration form and their child has shown up to class. Focus on making the enrollment experience as seamless, helpful, and easy as possible.

RETENTION ADVOCACY

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During the Awareness phase, families encounter your brand for the first time. In this stage, families may or may not be shopping around for a school district. Your objective here is simple: Get in front of prospective enrollees’ eyes, and make them aware of your schools. Or, if you’re the only district in your town, remind families that your schools are doing great things for the community.

In the marketing world, the Retention phase is all about delighting and engaging families so that they continue on with your district rather than switching to another option. Making sure they’re having a great experience is key to keeping them in your schools.

Advocacy is the last stage of the customer journey. By this point, families don’t just want to be a part of your district—they’re committed to it. Families in this phase will often advocate for your schools to their relatives, friends, coworkers, and neighbors. They’re also the group of people who will stand up for your district if or when it’s necessary.

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What to Do in the Awareness Phase: Make touch points with your audience through ads, social media, community events, word-of-mouth, and search engines. These are all great ways to leave lasting impressions with your audience and help them develop familiarity with your brand.

What to Do in the Interest Phase: Share student success stories and testimonials, offer tours of your schools, and create a page on your website detailing what it’s like to be a student in your district. This stage of the customer journey is all about making unique connections. What are the little things you can do to make your district stand out?

What to Do in the Decision Phase: Customer service and hospitality play a big role in this stage. Being readily available to answer questions and explain the registration process can go a long way toward offering a seamless enrollment experience.

Your enrollment page is arguably your most important tool in the Decision phase, so you’ll want to make sure this page provides helpful information and an excellent user experience.

What to Do in the Retention Phase: One of the best ways to retain families is to keep them connected to your district. You can craft these connections in a variety of ways: investing in extracurricular programs, providing exciting course selections, being strategic about feeder patterns, or even building ongoing touch points through newsletters. Think about how you can keep families looking ahead and continuously excited for the future.

What to Do in the Advocacy Phase: To grow more advocates, you have to invest in the ones you already have. The Advocacy phase is all about amplifying your advocates’ voices and influence. Engage with them through community leadership programs and family advocacy initiatives. Because word-of-mouth is so powerful, your advocates are oftentimes the first touch points people have with your schools—the spark that kick-starts the customer journey cycle all over again.

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by Marie Kressin

AWARENES

For every one of your prospective enrollees, the customer journey begins here: in the Awareness phase. This is when families are hearing about your district for the first time, whether they just moved into your community, are first-time parents, or aren’t zoned for your district. As school leaders, the question you should be asking in this stage of the enrollment process is: Do your prospective families even know your schools exist?

Now, you might be thinking this phase of the customer journey isn’t applicable to your district. After all, if you’re the only district in town, everyone probably knows about your schools. But even if you’re the only district in your area, the Awareness phase is important.

Today, families have options. For better or worse, school choice legislation has changed the way families think about enrollment. So even if everyone in your community knows you exist, it’s important to remind them about all the great things happening in your district. That way, when they sit down to decide where to send their kids, they’ll have your schools in mind.

The Awareness phase is all about educating your community—but we don’t just mean sharing information about your district. It’s also important to make sure your community knows that your district is an option for them. In other words, do families know they can choose to enroll their children in your schools even if they aren’t zoned for your district? If not, how are you sharing that information? What are you doing to make your prospective families aware of your district and your process for enrolling?

Here’s the thing: There are probably families in your area who are unaware of their options and maybe even completely unaware of you. If you want to connect with new parents and community members—and make sure that everyone has access to information about your enrollment process— you’re going to have to get creative.

Optimize your website for searchability.

Today, when new parents are choosing a district, there’s somewhere they go before even setting foot in a school.

They go online. That’s why Erin Dunsey, communications manager for Peoria Unified School District in Arizona, took an interest in search engine optimization, or SEO. Peoria Unified had seen a recent drop in kindergarten enrollment,

so the communications team made it their mission to improve enrollment numbers by leveraging the district’s marketing efforts.

“I’m a parent with two kids,” Dunsey says. “I thought about everything I might want to know about a school and what I’d do to try and find that information. So I went to Google and typed in ‘Kindergarten Peoria,’ just to see what would come up. We weren’t on page 1 or even page 2—we were somewhere around page 20.”

Dunsey knew that for the district to appear higher in Google’s search results, they’d have to make some changes. So that’s exactly what they did. While they could have reviewed Google Analytics data or researched optimization best practices, their approach was actually far simpler.

Peoria Unified conducted a survey asking preschool and kindergarten parents what factors they thought about when deciding where to send their kids to school. Dunsey compared these survey results to what she was seeing on competing schools’ homepages, specifically those that were appearing on the first few pages of Google’s search results.

“I found a lot of commonalities,” Dunsey says. “Some of those commonalities centered around high-quality teachers. I also saw that school safety and rigorous curriculum seemed to be important to families. And all those things were on our website, but they weren’t necessarily prominent.” So on the kindergarten page of Peoria Unified’s website, the communications team began highlighting the concerns that were both important to families and ranking highly on Google.

Later, Dunsey checked back to see whether her team’s work had impacted their website’s visibility. “And I saw that we’d gone from somewhere around page 20 to page 2,” she says.

If your website isn’t appearing in search results as readily as you might like, you don’t necessarily need to sign yourself up for an SEO training. Instead, why not try the research approach used by the communications team in Peoria Unified? Start by asking yourself what families are looking for. Do you have survey data? Do you have a focus group you could consult? Once you’ve identified your keywords and key topics, make some changes to your website’s homepage. Over time, you too could see your website’s visibility improve on Google.

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Connect with local realtors.

When new families move into your district, they’ll likely be all over the map when it comes to which grades their children are in and which channels they’re using to research surrounding districts. So how can you possibly hope to connect with them? To answer this question, Barnegat Township School District in New Jersey turned to a potentially underutilized group of stakeholders for help: local realtors.

Working with local firm Laura Bishop Communications, Barnegat Township saw an opportunity in their community’s growth. “There was an explosion of buying and selling houses,” says Phaedra Laird, an account manager for the firm. “And we wanted to capture some of that momentum.”

“We’ve seen different towns that have gotten hit financially because their enrollment has gone down,” adds Superintendent Dr. Brian Latwis. “So we really wanted to put our best foot forward with those new individuals as they were deciding whether they wanted to put down roots here.”

It’s important to note that realtors can legally only provide information about local schools if they’re asked explicitly.

That means you can’t expect your local realtors to initiate a conversation with prospective community members about why they should enroll their children in your schools. But that’s okay. The goal is simply to build awareness of your district. In other words, when homebuyers do ask local realtors about nearby schools, will they know what to say? If all realtors can do is pass along information, it’s important to make sure they have as much information as possible.

At the end of the breakfast, Barnegat Township even provided the realtors with district-branded swag. “We wanted to give them that reminder,” Latwis explains, “so that even after the realtors leave here, they have those pens and shirts and notepads sitting on their desks. Those things are all little visual reminders of the day they spent in our district.

It’s our way of reminding them that we’re here and that we have great things to offer.”

Thanks to research from the National Association of Realtors, Laird and Latwis knew that homebuyers prioritize the quality of the school district in their communities.

“People are willing to compromise on price, condition, size, all those things,” says Laird. “But schools matter.” Because homebuyers care so much about local schools, this kind of partnership would be a win both for the district and for the realtors themselves.

So with Laird’s help, Barnegat Township put together a breakfast and information session for local realtors. “Our goal was to present a lot of the really cool opportunities that we have here for students,” Latwis explains. In addition to presentations about academic growth and special programs, they also took the realtors on a tour of the high school to the district’s brand-new computer lab and awardwinning arts program.

Photo courtesy of Barnegat Township School District “So we let them get a feel for our schools, and then we equipped them with information that they could take back,” Laird explains. “That way, when someone asks them how our schools are, they already know our points of pride. They can provide that information to people who are considering moving into the township.”

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Communicate New Information.

Like we said earlier, if you’re the only school district in town, it would be easy to assume that your entire community is already aware that you exist. But what if something changes?

What if a new school choice policy allows parents zoned for a neighboring district to enroll in your schools instead? What if your district opens a new school—a magnet school, let’s

say—and your community participates in a lottery-based enrollment system for the first time ever? What then?

This is the exact situation Colorado’s 27J School District found themselves in when they opened their Discovery Magnet School. The K-8 school offers a STEM-focused curriculum and is the district’s first-ever magnet school.

“Our community needed to understand first what a magnet school is,” says Kevin Denke, a communications manager for the district. “They needed to understand how magnet schools are unique, and then also understand the lotterybased enrollment process—because, again, that’s different from the traditional neighborhood school.”

Of course, because the community had never had a magnet school before, the district had to contend with some misconceptions. For example, a number of community members thought Discovery would be an exclusive opportunity requiring an application process. “So that was something we had to address in our communications,” says Denke. “This is an opportunity for all families.”

One of the most important priorities for district leadership was that Discovery Magnet School’s student enrollment would accurately represent the entire 27J community. They wanted to encourage students to enroll even if Discovery wasn’t the closest school to their neighborhoods. To build awareness of the school beyond its immediate vicinity, the communications team held in-person information sessions throughout the entire district. They also worked with their translations department to send out a print mailer in Spanish and provide an on-site translator at all their in-person events.

The 27J team also did some digital advertising using Facebook, Instagram, and Google Ads, setting the boundaries for their campaign wider than the district’s boundaries in order to reach more families. “We especially leaned over into a pocket of a neighboring district that doesn’t offer anything like Discovery Magnet,” says Mikel Philippi, another of the district’s communications managers. “Colorado parents are used to having open choice of schools, so we knew there was a good chance we would be able to recruit not just from within our district boundaries, but in other areas as well.”

we saw perform well consistently was copy that explicitly connected a science-based curriculum to STEM careers.”

Parents liked hearing that Discovery Magnet School would put their children on track for well-paying jobs, so Denke and Philippi used that language to gain traction online, build engagement, and expand the reach of their posts—all of which helped build awareness throughout the community.

What’s next?

Building awareness of your schools means connecting with people who don’t know you yet. And if they’re not aware of you yet, you may not be aware of them, either. So whether you’re trying to connect with first-time parents and new community members, or just sharing new information with your stakeholders, it’s important to cast your net wide.

Improving your website’s searchability, connecting with realtors, and leveraging online ad campaigns are all great ideas.

But no matter what approach you take, when you ask yourself whether prospective families know about your district, you should be able to confidently say, “Yes.” With that as your answer, you’re ready to move your prospective enrollees into the next phase of the customer journey. Now that they know you exist, it’s time to build their interest in everything your schools have to offer.

Whether you’re trying to connect with first-time parents and new community members, or just sharing new information with your stakeholders, it’s important to cast your net wide.

As part of their ad campaign, the communications team used A/B testing on Facebook and Instagram to determine what kinds of posts performed the best. “We were constantly tracking performance data,” Philippi says, “and one thing WINTER 2024 /

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by Corey Whaley

INTERES

Once prospective families know your school district is an option for their kids, they need to know why they should choose your schools. This is called the Interest phase, and as the name implies, it’s the time to pique your potential enrollees’ interest in your schools. In the private sector, this is the phase when customers are considering whether or not to purchase a product or service, but in school terms, it’s when prospective families are considering whether or not to enroll their children in your district.

The best way to approach this integral second step in the customer journey is by answering one simple question: How can you make your schools stand out?

Honing your core message is the key here. It’s simply about telling your community who you are and how your schools can provide what they want—whether that’s rigorous academic offerings, a unique school culture, a strong CTE program, or state-of-the-art classrooms.

As you develop strategies for gaining interest, you might find that they overlap with other phases. A community engagement event, for example, could appeal to families in any phase of the customer journey. But don’t worry—at its healthiest, the customer journey is a self-sustaining cycle that keeps each phase in play at all times. So some overlap should be expected.

needed to cater their message to parents with children in transitional kindergarten (TK), pre-K, or kindergarten. By researching public perceptions, SCUSD’s communications team was able to pinpoint exactly how to appeal to this audience.

These families needed to know that the district offered the same quality education as private schools at no cost. “Since area private schools push enrollment early and ask for deposits that families can’t get back after the spring, we wanted to introduce ourselves as the preferred educational choice for those grade levels—one that is free, has highly qualified staff, and is a place their children are going to be happy and safe,” says Jennifer Dericco, APR, SCUSD’s director of communications and community engagement.

During the pandemic, many families stopped enrolling pre-K children, so a big piece of SCUSD’s strategy for building interest among first-time parents is informing them about the importance of early childhood education. They also want to make it clear that SCUSD offers free TK for 4-year-olds, something new parents may be unaware of. From social media posts and direct mail postcards to newsletters and large banners, the district speaks directly to their audience of new parents and points them toward more information on their website.

That being said, in the Interest phase, one thing remains the same no matter your approach: You have a unique story to tell, and now is the time to tell it. For a better idea of how this phase could play out for your schools, let’s look at a few surefire strategies to help you stand out from the crowd.

Speak to specific audiences.

Since prospective families are comparing your schools to others, now is the time to focus your marketing efforts on exactly what your schools offer. It’s all about appealing to your audiences’ specific interests. If families are flocking to a nearby district for their new CTE program, then you already know what they’re interested in. So how can you make sure they know all about your own CTE program and what it’s already offering students in your area?

Post-pandemic, California’s Santa Clara Unified School District (SCUSD) found itself wrestling with declining enrollment numbers, especially for early learners. To make up for enrollment loss and compete with local private schools, they WINTER 2024 /

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SCUSD also promotes an early learning event each spring that showcases the district’s personality and approach to learning. Preschool and TK teachers from across the district, as well as support teams, are on hand to meet families and engage with prospective students.

“We have chalk and bubbles and hands-on activities,” Dericco says. “Families get to see their children being lovingly engaged in learning and having a good time. This allows us an informal way to humanize our staff and build initial relationships with our families.” SCUSD holds the event at their Family Resource Center because, according to Dericco, “having smaller, targeted events feels less intimidating to a lot of our families, especially those who are economically disadvantaged or whose children are English learners.”

Fun and student-focused, this event is a great way for SCUSD to market what it’s like to be a part of their schools and to give families more information on their early learning program.

Photo courtesy of Santa Clara Unified School District

Use video to invite and inform.

Sometimes getting prospective families interested in your schools is less about telling them who you are and more about showing them. By this point, you’re probably already using photos to highlight your schools and culture, but have you considered using videos in your marketing campaigns?

According to Forbes, viewers retain 95% of a message when they receive it through video—a huge jump from the 10% they retain when simply reading text. Moreover, 90% of 30

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customers say that videos help them make buying decisions.

If your customers are prospective families, then growing their interest in your schools through video is a pretty safe bet. Video isn’t just a great way to showcase the culture and personality of your schools; it’s also an effective and efficient way to provide families with information.

In early 2023, the School District of Oakfield in Wisconsin decided to use video to show how they could compete with larger urban districts. Their video highlights benefits like 4-year-old pre-K and affordable onsite childcare. “You don’t know what you don’t see,” Superintendent Tracey Conners tells SchoolCEO. “We wanted our community to know that we offer a vast array of opportunities while also having that small-town atmosphere where everyone knows you.”

To produce and help share the video, Oakfield partnered with CESA 6, a co-op serving school districts in Wisconsin and beyond. The result is a high-quality video, which runs just over two minutes long and provides a touching, entertaining, and informative glimpse into their schools and culture.

The goal is to drive interest by sharing the core message that Oakfield is a place where kids thrive and feel a sense of belonging. The video’s script, written by CESA 6 communications director Lisa Sink, is voiced by several students from different grades—a clever way of inviting viewers to imagine their own kids as part of the Oakfield family.

“We call ourselves the Mighty Oaks,” says the first student narrator, as we see kids of all ages walking into school, gathering at lockers, holding backpacks. What follows is a montage of scenes showing highly engaged students and teachers, learning spaces, bustling hallways, and even the district’s service dog Oakley. Viewers get an up-close look at the district as its own students describe the many opportunities and services it provides. Then the video closes with the district’s motto and an invitation: Our roots run deep. Our branches stretch far. We are the Mighty Oaks. Come join us.

To make sure their video reached the right audiences, Oakfield shared it on social media, created several digital ads focusing on specific programs and messaging, and linked the video on their homepage. After initially sharing the video in February 2023, Conners started receiving calls praising the project. “It just brought tears to my eyes,” she tells us. And though it’s impossible to measure the video’s ongoing impact, enrollment in the district’s 4-year-old pre-K program increased after it was shared.

Through video, Oakfield has been able to drive interest in a way that feels inviting and personal while also being informative. And your district could do the same—even if you’re on a tight budget. “It doesn’t have to be expensive,” says Sink. “These days you can film a movie on your iPhone, and you don’t even need a videographer. Video is a great tool. Just try it.”

show off how awesome our students and employees are, and show what we have to offer,” Elliott says. “I think by focusing on people, we were able to do that.”

Market your schools in a relatable way.

No matter who you’re competing with, your district needs to find creative, memorable ways to stand out while also inviting new families in. Spring Branch ISD in Texas did just that with their “I AM SBISD” marketing campaign. Faced with declining student numbers and heavy competition from Houston’s many private and charter schools, the district needed a new approach to garnering enrollment interest. “We wanted to showcase what SBISD is all about,” says Chris Elliott, the district’s marketing coordinator.

Through community surveys and focus groups, Elliott and his team learned they needed to market their schools in a more relatable way. “The community wanted authenticity,” he tells us. “The district had been using a lot of stock photos and graphics, but our constituents said they wanted to see people who looked like them.”

So Elliott and his team created a multifaceted new marketing campaign that focused on showcasing images of a diverse array of students and staff, paired with a personal, relatable tagline: “I AM SBISD.” “We are more than our district goals, academic achievement, and core values,” Elliott says. “While those things are components of a great district, the people are what make Spring Branch ISD special.”

In all their marketing materials, the district shared their simple yet powerful message with images of thriving students and staff. To further drive interest in their programming, SBISD made alternate versions of their tagline that highlighted their specific offerings and opportunities. From “I AM SBISD Academics” to “I AM SBISD Fine Arts,” this approach allowed the district to showcase all kinds of students and invite prospective families to imagine their own kids in SBISD.

Invite them in.

There are countless ways to tell your district’s story. But to gain the kind of interest you need to guide families to the next, most important phase of the customer journey, you’ve got to leave them wanting to be a part of your school community.

If a young family on a budget doesn’t know you offer free pre-K, you’ve got to tell them. If families don’t know your close-knit, small-town schools also provide innovative learning environments, you’ve got to show them. And if they can’t see their kids in your schools, you’ve got to help them imagine it.

Ultimately, the Interest phase of the customer journey is all about marketing how your schools can meet prospective families’ needs. It’s about focusing on the many things you have to offer—whether they are unique or not—and driving home the idea that your school culture is one where any student can thrive.

In the end, the campaign was a success for the district.

With engagement and impressions at far greater numbers than before, SBISD garnered enough fresh interest in their schools to see an enrollment increase. “We just wanted to WINTER 2024 /

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by Melissa Hite

DECISIO

It’s tempting to think that once you’ve generated awareness of and interest in your district, your marketing work is done. After all, you’ve gotten your district’s name and brand out there. You’ve honed your core message and made the case for why families should choose your schools over the competition. What more is there to do?

But the next step may well be the most crucial part of the customer journey so far. The private sector calls this the Decision phase, and for good reason. Even if a family is planning to enroll their child in your district, they haven’t officially made their decision until the final form is submitted and the student shows up to school. This means you could still lose them—even at the finish line.

If your enrollment process is confusing, inaccessible, or otherwise unwelcoming, they may go looking for a better experience elsewhere. So how can you make your enrollment process as easy and welcoming as possible?

Centralize your enrollment info.

Your first goal at this stage is to simplify the enrollment process as much as you can. Start by looking at enrollment through your families’ eyes. Even if your schools have been registering students the same way for years, for many families, this is a brand-new experience— and it’s incredibly intimidating. The easier you can make this process, the less likely families will be to abandon your registration in search of a simpler option.

Of course, you can’t change the legal requirements for school enrollment—and in some cases, you may not even be able to change your enrollment system. But regardless of your circumstances, you can at least centralize your registration information in one easy-to-find place.

As new families begin the enrollment process, they may not know where to start. If they run into questions, they may call your district or their individual school—but more likely, they’ll check your website. And if they can’t find what they’re looking for, it might sour their relationship with your schools.

In our 2022 research “The What and Why of School Websites,” we found that 30% of district websites did not link to information about enrollment directly from their homepages. Small districts—those with 2,500 students or fewer—typically included less information about enrollment than districts of all other sizes. If your district

is part of the 30% without information on your website’s homepage, it’s time to change that. Having a link to your enrollment info “above the fold”—in the top half of your homepage, before visitors have to scroll down—will make things that much easier on families.

There’s a lot that goes into building an effective enrollment page for your website—and here, we’ve just scratched the surface.

To learn more, turn to page 45.

But your website isn’t the only place where you can centralize information. In Minnesota, Richfield Public Schools has taken a different approach. While their detailed enrollment page is clearly linked from their homepage, they also give out print copies of their Pre-K and Kindergarten Enrollment Guide at kickoff events and at each school site. This simple 12-page booklet— emblazoned on the front with real first-day-of-school photos of adorable Richfield kindergarteners—is a wealth of information.

“If you’re a new family enrolling your child for the first time, it can be overwhelming,” says Jennifer Valley, Richfield’s director of marketing and communications. “Families will come to an event like the kindergarten kickoff, then think of a question after they leave. But if they can leave with this packet that includes everything, they can refer back to it later and use it as a resource.”

Of course, a 12-page document can’t realistically explore every single question that a family might ask. Your families are unique, and they probably have totally unique concerns. That’s why Richfield’s enrollment guide includes a directory of contact information for a multitude of district departments, from transportation to nutrition services to ELL services to special education. “This way, if you’re open enrolling and have questions about transportation, or your child has allergies and you have questions about nutrition services, this guide will help you to quickly and easily contact the right person,” says Valley.

Provide opportunities for in-person connection and support.

Making sure your families can find the info they need is only the first step. The second—and perhaps more important—goal is to make families feel welcome. After all, enrollment isn’t a transaction; it’s the start of a relationship.

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Photos courtesy of Waterford School District You already know that belonging is critical to a student’s success in school. In fact, according to research from survey software company Qualtrics, high school students who feel like they belong are more likely to be glad they attend their schools, stay through graduation, and even recommend their schools to others. What’s more, not feeling welcome is one of the top three reasons (excluding moving) that students say they don’t plan to graduate from their current high schools.

In other words, a sense of welcome and belonging is makeor-break for a family’s journey with your district—and it starts here. This work will continue into the Retention stage (see page 36), but the Decision stage sets the tone for everything that comes after.

So it makes sense to provide opportunities at this stage for new students and their families to connect with their schools in person. This will not only go a long way toward making enrollees feel welcome, but it will also provide support throughout the enrollment process for anyone who needs it.

That’s exactly the idea behind the Waterford Welcome events put on by Michigan’s Waterford School District. “The movement has been toward doing all enrollment online, and I understand that,” explains Sarah Davis, Waterford’s director of communications and community relations. “But even though a lot of families can probably do it online, it can be 34

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confusing, and they might have questions. That’s why these in-person events are still really important.”

Wanting to make things as easy on families as possible, the district began hosting a Waterford Welcome booth at family engagement nights already taking place at their early childhood center. The booth has all kinds of branded swag, from T-shirts to bubbles to lollipops, to get families pumped about their new schools. But these events are about more than just celebration; they’re also about supporting new families through the enrollment process.

Small touches throughout these events show families that Waterford really does care. The enrollment team sets up a computer lab for those who want to enroll online and brings paper forms for those who’d rather go analog. Staff members are standing by; they will walk through the process with parents step-by-step or just answer questions, whatever the family needs. There’s even a play area to keep kids occupied while their families work on enrolling. After all, as Davis puts it, “it’s hard to sit and do that paperwork when your child is pulling at you the whole time.”

Waterford also makes sure these events are inclusive of their entire population. “We have Spanish interpreters to ensure that Spanish-speaking families are able to complete the process,” says Davis. “That really is the majority of the people who prefer these in-person events. They’re looking for

personal touch point was gone. “We were hearing from families, I enrolled, and I heard nothing,” says Communications Manager Mandi LeCompte. “It was kind of a black hole in terms of information.”

In their book Successful Kindergarten Transition, researchers Dr. Robert C. Piante and Marcia Kraft-Sayre argue that a family needs at least seven touch points before entering a new school to feel connected with their school community.

So in 2022, citing that research, Highline set up a series of seven touch points between enrollment and the first day of school. Some were simple, like mailed postcards or robocalls from principals. Others were full-scale events like Jump Start, “a three-day learning experience where students practice kindergarten,” LeCompte explains. “They learn the basics about how you move about the school, how you interact with your teacher, what the processes are.”

that little bit of extra help.” This isn’t a huge population for the district; 88% of their kids speak only English at home. But providing that small touch goes a long way toward supporting all families through the process—and showing them that they belong in Waterford.

Keep in touch between enrollment and the start of school.

From the time they enroll until the first day of school, families are in a kind of weird limbo. After they sign all their forms and submit all their paperwork, they may be left wondering, Did I do everything right? Do I need to do anything else? What’s next? Some families sign up for school in August, but many do so as early as February, and six months is a long time to be left in the dark. Just as you made the enrollment process itself as manageable as possible, you want to make the weeks or months afterward easy on your families, too—and you can do so by communicating clearly and frequently.

This new system seems to be paying off. In surveys conducted early last year, Highline found that 96% of their new families reported receiving communication that made them feel welcome. “Getting that family relationship off on the right foot, with the right tone, is really important,” says LeCompte. “These families are going to have a really close relationship with this district for potentially 12 years or more—so we want to start off strong and set the right tone for their academic journey.”

Making it easy shows you care.

We started this phase with two goals: Make the enrollment process itself as painless as possible, and make new families feel welcome in your district. But the truth is that these goals actually go hand-in-hand. By alleviating some of the confusion and stress that can arise during the Decision phase, you’re already beginning to show families that you care about them, that you’re here to help. With a firm foundation like that, your relationships are sure to grow.

After moving their enrollment entirely online in 2020, Highline Public Schools in Washington realized a gap in their new process. Before, when families enrolled their incoming kindergarteners in person, they received a packet of information and had the opportunity to ask questions. Now, that WINTER 2024 /

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by Marie Kressin

RETENTIO

Congratulations! Your families have filled out their forms, sent in their paperwork, and clicked “submit”—and you will officially have new students in your classrooms. But wouldn’t it be nice if they returned year after year, all the way through to graduation? Wouldn’t it be nice if they not only started going to school in your district, but finished their schooling with you as well?

“For a student to really feel connected, that means more than just being in the building,” says Kyle Naughton, webmaster and English department chair for Community High School District 117 in Illinois. “It means having an opportunity to contribute to the school culture.” Engaged students are more likely to understand the importance of coming to school—of coming to your school.

School choice legislation means families can choose to leave your district at any time—and that’s what the Retention phase is all about. During this stage of the customer journey, the question is: What are you doing to make sure families and students stay in your district?

And the more you can connect students to work that excites them, to one another, and to your staff—the more likely they are to stay in your district. “Students who stay after school doing fine arts and other activities are able to develop a sense of community,” Naughton says. “They’re building relationships with staff members and other likeminded students.”

When you think about circumstances that might cause a student or family to leave your district, does your mind immediately go to everything that may have gone wrong?

A lack of belonging? Difficulty with staff or peers? It’s true that sometimes these things happen, and it’s up to the district to make it right—but that’s not what we’re talking about here. (For more on providing customer service when there’s a problem, turn to page 60.)

Instead of merely reacting to negative situations, how can your district proactively create an awesome experience for families so that they consistently recognize your schools as the top choice for their children? After all, not all families who choose to leave your district do so because of a problem. Sometimes they simply believe there are better options elsewhere.

However, the more connected families are to your schools, the less likely they are to leave. In fact, the more you can do to involve and support your families, the better. That’s because the Retention phase of the customer journey isn’t just about retaining students—it’s about retaining their families, too.

Extracurriculars keep kids connected—and coming to school.

You’ve seen the research: Participation in extracurricular activities has a positive correlation with graduation numbers. And when we’re talking about retention, keeping kids in the classroom also means reducing your dropout rates. Every activity or event that a student participates in is another opportunity for connection. It’s kind of like Velcro: the more points of attachment there are, the more likely your students are to stick around.

Moreover, extracurricular programming is a great way to bridge gaps between grade levels. When you look at your district’s feeder pattern, where do families most often opt out of your district? Do you find that most families matriculate from elementary school to middle school seamlessly only to later choose a high school outside of your district? Extracurricular activities are a great way to get students—and their families—involved early. For example, if a student starts playing soccer as a Junior Bobcat, then they’re all the more likely to stay in your district long enough to become a High School Bobcat.

But if you want your students to get excited about your district, then you have to make sure they know what you offer. “What you don’t want is kids not joining anything because they don’t know about any of it,” says Naughton.

“It’s not like our eighth graders don’t know football exists, but they may not know about field hockey or bowling or the robotics team.” If your students don’t even know what’s in store for them, then why would they be excited about staying in your district?

That said, simply making students aware of their extracurricular options isn’t enough; you also need to make them look fun. “Just having a list of the activities we offer doesn’t get anyone excited,” Naughton explains.

“We want to capture moments, create videos, and design posters that make every activity look exciting. We want our students to feel like a big deal.”

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them—which is what led to the district’s sports media class. At its core, this class is all about creating content that promotes the CHSD 117 experience—whether that means crafting social media posts, designing posters, or writing copy for their student-run magazine. Members of the class thoughtfully document the extracurriculars CHSD 117 offers, from varsity athletics to JV quiz bowl. What the class prides itself on, though, is their innovative photography. Instead of the stilted team photos we’re all used to seeing, CHSD 117’s sports media students have figured out how to capture eye-catching photos that help build the district’s brand of excellence and intensity.

Naughton is quick to recognize that it will take more than visually interesting pictures to make students want to join the math team. But showcasing all the district’s extracurriculars as exciting opportunities will go a long way in developing a school culture where all activities are valued equally. “And the more we promote our activities,” Naughton says, “the more our teachers and counselors can say, Oh, I didn’t know you’re on the chess team! I saw your picture on Instagram! And our students see that their teachers care about them beyond just that one class. It helps our teachers remember that our students aren’t just brains on sticks. They’re whole people.”

By building excitement around your extracurriculars, you’ll make your students want to join the activities they’ve seen highlighted online or on posters around their schools. And if you can create a sense of belonging for your students, their families are more likely to recognize that their children are exactly where they belong: growing and learning in your district.

Help students and families plan their futures with you.

Recently, Spring Lake Park Schools in Minnesota took a hard look at how their students are making decisions about their futures. What is the district doing to support students as they make course selections? How are schools ensuring that each individual student has an academic plan tailored to their goals and interests? What can Spring Lake Park do to better involve families?

As a part of the district’s approach to personalized learning, each student develops a plan. “When students enter their eighth grade year, they start planning for ninth grade and developing an initial four-year plan that they can revisit and revise throughout high school,” says Erika Taibl, executive director of communications, marketing and outreach for the district. “Starting in seventh grade, students participate in at least one meeting with their counselor each year to talk about their future plans.” This is an opportunity for students and families to make long-term academic plans. It also allows the district to ensure that each student is involved in something that excites them and relates to their future goals.

However, Spring Lake Park wanted to take it one step further, to help students plan for their futures even beyond graduation. And that’s exactly what their career and college pathways are intended to do. “We just added two construction trades courses to our technology, engineering, and design pathway,” Taibl tells us. “Some of those students have told me in interviews that they would have opted out of school altogether, but instead, they’re showing up to build houses and chicken coops. They’re engaged in that learning because they can suddenly see options for themselves after high school.”

Photo courtesy of Community High School District 117

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Taibl recognizes, though, that allowing students to imagine their futures with—and even beyond—Spring Lake Park Schools is only half the battle. They must also make the process of registering for classes as easy and positive as possible. “We used to do registration a lot later,” she says.

“We had our students making decisions in just five days or so.

Now, we give families more time to browse course offerings and consider their options.”

The district also launched a website hub to help students and families prepare for registration. The hub includes an interactive online catalog that can be filtered by grade level, content area, and learning mode (school-based, hybrid, or online); a more traditional, downloadable course catalog; recorded presentations on key topics (such as career and college pathways or Spanish immersion); and a step-by-step guide on what to expect during the registration process.

“We’ve worked really hard to engage our families,” Taibl says.

“It’s not just about connecting with students. We’re really pushing to share opportunities for career exploration and college credits with families, too.” By making it easier for families and students to plan out their futures in the district, the decision of where to attend school year after year is a nobrainer for Spring Lake Park Schools’ families.

Provide additional supports to your families.

Investing time and resources in your families gives them even more reason to stick around. After all, people are less likely to leave a community if they feel supported. Superintendent Dr. Joshua McDowell of Crete Public Schools in Nebraska understands well the importance of bolstering a student’s support network. McDowell’s motto is “connected kids are successful kids.” He recognizes that for students to be connected and set up for success, their families must be connected, too.

One way Crete Public Schools supports its families is through its in-house adult education program, which currently enrolls about 200 adults. “They could be taking a family literacy class, adult basic education, English language learning, or even working toward their diploma. But we know how important it is that our families value education,” McDowell says. “If we have adults who are also involved and connected to our system, then the chances of their kids being successful is just that much higher.”

In addition to offering opportunities for adults, Crete Public Schools recognizes that many families’ work schedules make mid-afternoon pickup difficult. Kids need somewhere to go after school while their parents are still at work. So the district built a robust after-school program that is free of charge. Now, every student is offered a snack and dinner in addition to breakfast and lunch.

Even if you can’t offer after-school care and all three meals to every student, what can you do to make your families’ lives easier—to more deeply connect them to your schools?

Don’t take your families for granted.

When was the last time you went to the DMV? Did you enjoy your experience there? We probably know the answer to that question, but our bet is you’ll still end up going back— because you have to. Some places don’t have to worry about offering an awesome experience or making things easy on the folks they serve; their “customers” have no choice but to return. However, that’s just not the boat most districts are in.

“You’d never want to take for granted that you have a built-in base of customers,” Naughton tells us. “You need to always treat people with respect, offer them the best possible product, and give them the best experience you can for their tax dollars.”

Schools often don’t talk about their families in such blunt terms—but the reality is that your families are your customers. Retaining them means giving them a great experience, getting them excited about being in your district, and making their choice to stay as easy as possible. That’s how you keep students all the way through to the finish.

Photo courtesy of Crete Public Schools

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by Corey Whaley

ADVOCAC

Bringing families to the final stage of the customer journey is a big deal. You and your team have spent countless hours and days supporting new enrollees—and your schools are better off because of it. Hopefully you’ve been able to celebrate growing your school community and your district’s impact, but you know all too well that the work isn’t over. As your community’s needs change, so will your methods for connecting with and guiding new families into your district.

Fortunately, you’ve already done the hard part—you’ve earned your families’ trust and confidence in your schools.

Now it’s time to tap into the power of their influence in your community. Advocates are often the spark that kick-starts the customer journey all over again. They are neighbors talking to neighbors, friends chatting over coffee, a proud dad bragging about his child’s success in your schools.

When people are excited to be a part of your school community, they will share that enthusiasm—but you’ve got to help them along the way. So the most important question to ask in the Advocacy phase is: How can you empower your advocates to use their voices and influence to tell your district’s story?

Create welcoming opportunities to inform and engage.

If you want your advocates telling your story, you’ve got to make sure they know what’s going on in your schools. In a moment when trust in institutions is at an all-time low, it’s vital that your advocates know everything they can about how your district works and what your schools can offer your community’s students.

For Delaware Area Career Center (DACC), tapping into advocacy has helped clear up a long-standing misconception about the school. The CTE high school, which serves six districts in and around Ohio’s Delaware County, offers a wide range of career exploration programs for the area’s diverse array of students. But like many CTE schools, most of the community thought DACC’s programs were only for students not planning to pursue post-secondary education.

Many parents in the area weren’t aware of all the immersive opportunities and hands-on experiences the school could provide—regardless of a student’s career trajectory.

But after being contacted by Beth Probst—a parent who also happened to counsel students on college and career readiness—DACC staff devised a plan to encourage a new

narrative in the community. Having held her own misconceptions for so long, Probst advised DACC to talk to families and find out what would resonate with them. So the career center held a small coffee chat in her living room with about five of her neighbors and a couple of staff members from the school. The chat was a huge success, allowing the DACC team to correct misperceptions and earn trust. With a neighbor present, guests knew they weren’t being sold to or manipulated—and they were excited to learn and share more about the school.

“No matter what a school puts in front of you, no matter how many times they email you or put a message on social media, it really comes down to neighbors talking to neighbors.”

Having this conversation was also quite enlightening for the DACC communications team. They realized they weren’t using the right language to explain what their school actually does. “When I used the word elective, a lightbulb went off with the parents I was talking to,” says Alicia Mowry, DACC’s communications director. “It’s a term they’re familiar with, and we were able to use that common ground as a platform to talk about how our programs are electives, but also so much more. So we decided to start calling ourselves a superelective school.”

This insight, learned through a small, intimate coffee chat, would be a game changer for DACC. “No matter what a school puts in front of you, no matter how many times they email you or put a message on social media, it really comes down to neighbors talking to neighbors,” Mowry says.

With that in mind, she’s helped evolve DACC’s coffee chats into regular and reliable opportunities for promoting advocacy and sharing the school’s story. Now held four times a year, these events are successful in part because they’re WINTER 2024 /

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small and personal. Despite no longer hosting the chats, Probst still attends each meet-up, whether it’s at a library or a local coffee shop. “Even if attendees don’t know who she is, she’s not a staff member, so they trust her automatically because she gains nothing from saying positive things about us,” Mowry says. “She always starts the conversation about all the options for high school students—from AP classes to college credit plus classes—and then she introduces DACC as another one of their options and hands it over to me.”

Mowry customizes each meet-up based on what the attendees are interested in discussing or learning. And because community members have to register for each event, DACC is also able to keep them engaged and informed online.

“Once they register, we have their email addresses, and after every event we immediately launch a three-part email series to them,” she says. Attendees also get DACC’s monthly Explorer Newsletter, which tells them about upcoming events and encourages them to share the information with neighbors and friends.

“It’s an ongoing social experiment,” Mowry says. “But for me, success is seeing how excited they are, seeing our community support the career center because they understand how important career tech is for anybody.”

Connect advocates with prospective families.

Following the pandemic shutdown, Salina Public Schools in Kansas wanted to reconnect with families in the community and help them through their journey back to school.

This led to the creation of Salina’s Family Rep program—an initiative that connects the district’s existing advocate families with prospective families. Through this network, anyone considering enrolling their kids in Salina’s schools can hear all about them directly from a family who already has kids in the district.

The way it works is simple but powerful: Each principal identifies one or two families who are enthusiastic supporters of their school and asks to share their contact information with interested families. “Their goal is to just talk from the perspective of being a family involved in that particular school,” says Jennifer Camien, the district’s communications director.

“Those over-the-backyard-fence conversations are where decisions are made and impressions are formed.”

The district also sends each family rep what they call ambassador emails. “These emails are strategically and intentionally crafted about once a month and tie back in with some of our key messaging,” Camien explains. “This basically gives people some good information about our district, already packaged up with a bow on top.” These are also sent out to key contacts who aren’t family reps but are advocates or supporters of the district.

To promote inclusivity in their program and schools, Salina encourages principals to recruit at least one Spanishspeaking family per site to be family reps, especially where there are higher numbers of Spanish-speaking students.

“These new families are hearing from trusted sources, people they can identify with and relate to,” says Camien.

Although the program has been a success, the district plans to adjust it slightly. Now they’ll have principals ask prospective families if they mind being contacted by a family rep.

“We’re reversing it,” Camien says. “Instead of a prospective family having to take the action, our family reps—who are very enthusiastic about their roles—will now be the ones doing the outreach. That’s going to level up our game.”

Photo courtesy of Delaware Area Career Center

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At any given time, the plan is to have at least 12 family reps— one from each school. But Camien believes that as the program moves into its second year, many of their current

family reps will want to continue advocating for the district.

“This entire program is self-sustaining,” she says. “We did a basic launch, but we can sustain it now because it’s kind of fluid. It can grow with us.”

Engage local leaders.

Finding and connecting with influential members of your local community is a great way to build advocacy, especially if they’re already supporters of your schools. But how can you make sure this group is actively involved in sharing your best stories? Well, leaders want to lead, so it’s about empowering them to tap into their own influence. You do this by keeping them engaged and informed about the inner workings of your schools and the role they can play in helping your district thrive.

For a great example of this, let’s visit Wisconsin’s HowardSuamico School District (HSSD). A couple of years ago, they created Leadership HSSD, an annual program that invites 40 leaders from the community to monthly information sessions related to public schools and the district’s work.

The program is co-sponsored by the Howard-Suamico Education Foundation (HSEF), whose president, Brian Stuelpner, serves as co-chair. Stuelpner, a local business leader and parent of four kids in the district, was a part of HSSD’s referendum task force in 2021. “That really opened my eyes to the different complexities that the district deals with. It opened a lot of eyes in the community,” he tells us. “We wanted to learn more so we could become more engaged and involved.” Now, Stuelpner helps lead Leadership HSSD’s monthly sessions.

“We are incredibly lucky to live in a community that wants to help,” says Nicole Smith, executive director of HSEF. “And often the question is, What does that help look like? This has served as a vehicle to help people better understand the answer to that question. Leadership HSSD brings together community members who are already engaged and empowers them to serve as advocates while also creating relationships with one another.”

Each monthly session includes coffee, breakfast, and a book study on Jamie Vollmer’s Schools Cannot Do It Alone.

Then, leaders hear from mostly internal HSSD experts on

a variety of topics related to the district’s work, like governance and finance; teaching and learning; communications and engagement; and special education. “These educational presentations are designed to provide Leadership HSSD members with the information they need to engage in conversations with neighbors, friends, and community members,” Smith says.

For more on Jamie Vollmer and his work, listen to our podcast episode with him here.

Throughout the nine-month program, HSSD keeps advocacy top of mind. At the end of each meeting, cohorts are given a call to action. The group is asked to informally meet with another Leadership HSSD member over coffee or to share a positive story with someone in the community. “We want people to go out and continue to foster relationships within the cohort group, and also use the education they’ve gained to inform conversations and share positive stories in the community,” explains Kimberly Uelmen, HSSD’s director of school and community relations. When they graduate, each group also nominates other leaders in the community to serve in the next cohort.

And so the cycle of advocacy and influence continues.

Inviting local leaders to learn about your schools, make connections, and have conversations is an impactful strategy for sharing your district’s story while earning more and more advocates along the way.

Rebooting the Cycle The customer journey is a cycle—and setting your district up for success means strategically guiding prospective families through each phase. That’s how they become members of your school community—and hopefully advocates who can help start the cycle all over again.

Here’s what we mean: Advocates spread awareness, and ideally those who become aware of your schools will eventually become interested—perhaps even deciding to enroll. Then, if the family stays in your district long-term, they become advocates themselves. The cycle continues as every phase builds onto the next one.

In our conversations around enrollment, school leaders expressed the importance of telling the greater story of the good things happening in public schools. When you introduce families to your schools and show them how their children can thrive, you aren’t just helping your own district grow. You’re also continuing the powerful legacy of public education—and that’s a journey worth repeating.

By Heather Palacios

Let’s be honest: Enrolling a child in school can sometimes feel like doing your taxes. As a school leader—and maybe a parent yourself—you know firsthand that the process is, well, a process. And sometimes, it can be a confusing one. To be fair, there are many steps in student enrollment, and families may expect to encounter a bottleneck or two along the way.

But if you’re lucky enough to have had a smooth enrollment experience, it has probably stayed with you.

When a family is ready to enroll in your school district, they’ve reached the Decision phase of the customer journey. (For more on that, turn to page 32.) This is a pivotal moment for families—and a make-or-break moment for schools. At this point, families are ready to be a part of your district, but they still have one last step to take in order to make it official. They have to actually enroll. Schools, then, must provide an excellent experience that allows families to easily complete that crucial, final step.

That final step largely takes place on one very important part of your website: your enrollment page. This is one of your best tools for providing an exceptional customer experience and offering much-needed help. It’s the page that can turn a family who’s merely interested in your district into valuable members of your school community. But how exactly can this page help seal the deal? And what steps need to be taken along the way to ensure that it does? Let’s take a look at a few tactical ideas.

Think like your audience.

A strong enrollment page is first and foremost crafted from the lens of a parent or guardian. That means seeing the enrollment experience from a family’s perspective and empowering them with helpful information so they can make the most informed decision for their child. According to data from sales software company Salesforce, 65% of consumers expect companies to understand their needs—and your families’ expectations of your schools are probably no different. Thinking like your audience is one of the best ways to anticipate families’ needs and proactively provide solutions to meet them.

An enrollment page built from a parent’s perspective starts by answering the most important questions families have.

When families are weighing their enrollment options, they’re asking all kinds of important questions about the enrollment process, how your district operates, and everything in between. For example: • How long does the enrollment process take?

• My child is not zoned for this district. How do we apply for open enrollment?

• Does your school offer after-school care?

• What is the birthday cutoff for kindergarten?

• What if my child has a 504 Plan or IEP? Make a list of all the questions you can imagine families having, then try to provide as many answers as possible in one place. One of the best ways to do this is to feature an FAQ section on your enrollment page. Tennessee’s Gibson WINTER 2024 /

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County Special School District, for example, links to a detailed FAQ page from their enrollment page (Figure 1). There, families can learn more about the registration process along with answers to other common questions about the district.

If you want to take your FAQ section one step further, consider segmenting it into categories. Elementary school parents are probably asking different questions than high school parents. Similarly, newcomers to your area probably have more questions about your community than families who have lived in your city their entire lives.

Some enrollees may not even know what questions they should be asking. After all, many pre-K and kindergarten families are going through the enrollment process for the very first time. A page built with them in mind should be proactive about answering these questions. Universities, for example, are great at walking first-time freshmen through the enrollment process. New York University’s “How to Apply” page features a video explaining the enrollment process and what first-time students need to know before applying (Figure 2).

(Figure 1)

The bottom line is: Think like your audience. By answering all of the common questions families have during the registration process, you can be sure you’re meeting their needs—and bringing them one step closer to completing enrollment.

Make information easy to find and understand.

Your enrollment page needs to do more than just answer questions; it needs to be easy to navigate and understand.

When families have to weed through multiple webpages to find the answers they’re looking for, that’s a frustrating user experience. A good user experience, on the other hand, provides information quickly, easily, and all in one place.

According to research from inbound marketing platform Hubspot, 76% of consumers say the most important factor in a website’s design is that it makes it easy for them to find what they want. Families often have limited time and nonstop childcare duties—so the most thoughtful thing you can do is make your enrollment information easy to find and comprehend.

To put this concept into action, start by simplifying your design. Families have to take a number of important steps to complete the enrollment process: reviewing registration 46

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(Figure 2)

requirements, setting up an account, submitting their application, uploading additional documents, and more. The way these directions are laid out on a page can either make or break the enrollment experience.

When information is presented in a clean way, it’s less intimidating and easier to follow. Take Arkansas Virtual Academy’s “Four Steps to Enroll” form, for example (Figure 3). All of the school’s enrollment steps are showcased in a neat, condensed order with clear directions, which makes the process less overwhelming. Families simply click on the drop-down bars to complete each step.

Simplifying the design and user experience of your enrollment page isn’t just about aesthetics, though. It’s also about return on investment. According to data from research and advisory company Forrester, every dollar invested in user experience in the private sector brings $100 dollars in return on average. What’s more, good user experience can even increase conversion rates—the rate at which prospective customers become active customers—by up to 400%. In other words, good user experience may have the power to boost your enrollment numbers.

As you take a second look at your enrollment page, think about how design and user experience can help make information easy to find and understand. Try to simplify your design by getting rid of nonessential information—or start small and reorganize your information in a way that’s eye-catching and easy to comprehend.

(Figure 3)

Optimize your enrollment form.

Once you’ve equipped families with the information they need, the next step they’ll take is to fill out your enrollment form. Starting registration is a big step for families—and from an administrator’s perspective, it may seem like the moment you’ve gained a new student in your district. But that’s not always the case.

A recent study from software company Zuko reports that only 66% of people who start a form online successfully complete it. Fortunately, application forms have a higher completion rate: 75%. But that still leaves 25% of families who may or may not complete your form once they’ve begun to fill it out. That’s why optimizing your enrollment form is a critical part of building your enrollment page.

1. Try multistep forms.

First, you might try using what marketers call a multistep form—a long form broken into multiple pieces. According to Hubspot, breaking long forms into steps makes them less intimidating. “By allowing customers to complete their information in smaller chunks,” they write, “you create a positive user experience and increase conversions.” Plus, research from startup advisor Venture Harbour indicates that multistep forms garner 300% more conversions than regular forms.

You’ve probably encountered a multistep form if you’ve ever filed your taxes online. Filing your taxes is hardly ever fun, but tools like those offered by H&R Block and many others make the process a little less painful. Instead of requiring people to fill out their information through one long form, H&R Block only asks users to answer one question at a time. The simple design and intuitive user experience also make the process smooth and easy.

2. Focus on function.

Multistep forms aren’t the only way to provide a better registration experience. Another option is to focus on optimizing the functions within your form.

One essential function to use is inline validation: a prompt that tells users where they’ve entered incorrect information on a form and how to correct their mistakes (Figure 4). If you’ve ever accidentally typed in an invalid email address or skipped a required field on a form, you’ve probably encountered inline validation. This simple function, which can usually be turned on through the backend of your form, keeps users from having to guess why their answers can’t be submitted.

Another helpful function to consider for your forms is microcopy: short statements that help users navigate and understand fields on a form (Figure 5). While it’s similar to inline validation, microcopy doesn’t just appear when a user inputs incorrect information. Instead, it can appear anywhere on a digital form to give context to whatever information it asks users to provide.

3. Consider layout.

Making small layout adjustments on your form can also help—like converting a two-column form into one column (Figure 6). Several studies reveal that one-column forms outperform two-column forms in terms of speed and completion rates. A short study conducted by marketing learning platform CXL Institute found that participants completed single-column forms an average of 15.4 seconds faster than multicolumn forms.

Inline validation (Figure 4)

Besides, single-column forms also tend to look and function better on phones than multicolumn forms do. And since more than half of all website traffic comes through mobile devices, that factor can’t be overlooked.

Give your community options.

But what if a family isn’t ready to register? Even though you’ve given them helpful information on your enrollment page, they may still need more details before taking the next step. These in-between families probably won’t fill out your official enrollment form right away; they might need a personal touch to cross the finish line. This could take the form of a follow-up email, a phone call, or an in-person meeting.

You can also add personalization on your enrollment page.

This can be as simple as letting your community choose how they want to enroll. Arkansas Virtual Academy lets parents and guardians choose between registering with an online form, by phone, via online chat, or by downloading their mobile app. Offering options is just another way to provide a deeper layer of hospitality and empathy.

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Microcopy (Figure 5)

Multicolumn vs. single-column form (Figure 6)

Another way to reach in-between families is to add an interest form at the top of your enrollment page to collect basic information, like an email address, name, phone number, or last school attended. In Arkansas, eStem Public Charter Schools does this well (Figure 7). Their enrollment interest form only takes a few minutes to fill out, making the experience fast, simple, and unintimidating for families in the in-between stage. Public charter school network YES Prep is another great example (Figure 8). They feature an interest form button on their enrollment page for families who are not quite ready to apply but want to get in contact with a YES Prep team member.

It’s the small adjustments on your enrollment page that together make a major impact on the registration experience. Ultimately, the best enrollment page is built from a family’s perspective. It should answer their questions, display information in a way that’s easy to understand, and allow space for personalization.

(Figure 7) (Figure 8)

The enrollment process is—understandably—a stressful time for parents. So if we can leave you with one final thought, it’s this: Your enrollment page should serve families, anticipate their needs, and make their lives easier. That means the details matter—from the customization of your forms to the design and user experience to your FAQs. If your enrollment page is rooted in these principles, you’re already several steps ahead of the curve.

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Improve parent-teacher communication Parent, student, and teacher user experience is at the heart of what makes Rooms so powerful. Parents can see classroom announcements and message teachers in the app where they get school news and updates.

Keep up with Class Stream View classroom announcements and upcoming assignments within a particular course through Class Stream. Teachers and staff can upload class content, and students and guardians can view new updates.

Never get lost in translation Translate any message, class information section, or Class Stream content quickly and easily across both desktop and mobile. With this built-in feature, teachers and guardians can be on the same page regardless of what language is spoken at home.

Promote positive behaviour Your students are doing great things in the classroom. Rooms helps everyone celebrate these moments. With Behavior, teachers can allocate points to their students for participating in class, showing good conduct, and demonstrating your school’s values.

EMBRACING INCLUSIVITY PERSPECTIVE: DR. RUPAK GANDHI

During Dr. Rupak Gandhi’s five years at the helm of North Dakota’s Fargo Public Schools, he’s kept a sharp focus on inclusivity. So when new state legislation impacting an already vulnerable group was passed, the district responded by doubling down on their commitment to supporting all students.

Here, Dr. Gandhi shares the reasoning behind this bold move and argues that doing the best thing for your schools means doing the right thing for kids.

As the superintendent of Fargo Public Schools, I am committed to doing whatever it takes to support our students. This includes ensuring that every student feels safe and welcome in our schools, regardless of their identity or background.

So we’ve taken a proactive approach to inclusivity, with a recent emphasis on the LGBTQIA2S+ community. Our district’s firm stance on safeguarding the rights and dignity of transgender students, as outlined in our guiding philosophies, doesn’t just reflect our commitment to educational justice—it also allows us to market our schools as the inclusive environments they are.

This is not just about moral righteousness; it’s about pragmatism. At a time when families and educators are seeking nurturing learning environments, this stance distinguishes our schools.

It makes us a magnet for those aligned with our values. Creating an inclusive environment is about more than just policy; it’s about culture. We have taken steps to build a culture of inclusivity that starts from the top and permeates through every level of our educational community.

Some people have argued that our decision to support transgender students is not good for business. They say that it will alienate families and make it difficult to recruit and retain staff. However, I believe that the opposite is true: When schools create a sense of belonging for everyone, students and staff are more likely to want to be there.

Defining Our Standard This all began to unfold in April 2023, when a new anti-trans law (N.D.C.C. § 15.1-06-21) was passed by our legislature and signed by the governor. The law requires school personnel to out transgender students if their parents ask the school explicitly, and it prohibits trans students from using the restrooms of their choice without parental approval. It also allows teachers to ignore a student’s preferred pronouns. In short, this law requires educators and school districts to treat transgender students differently based solely on their gender identities.

However, such actions would be in direct conflict with federal anti-discrimination laws and guidance from the United States Department of Education concerning transgender and nonbinary students. Since the U.S. Constitution allows it, we in Fargo Public Schools determined that federal law should take precedence over state law on this issue. This decision was rooted in the ethos of doing right by our students.

We recognize that everyone is entitled to their beliefs. However, we will never place our own beliefs— whether they’re cultural, political, or faith-based—over the well-being of students. We must make sure every student can show up in our school buildings as their true, authentic selves—that they are heard, seen, accepted, and respected for who they are.

To bolster our stance, we consulted legal experts and examined data from organizations like the Trevor Project, a nonprofit focused on suicide prevention efforts for LGBTQIA2S+ youth. Their research on mental health has been instrumental in shaping our philosophies and inclusive practices, and has provided us with empirical evidence to defend our approach. For instance, suicide is a leading cause of death for young people ages 10 to 24, and LGBTQIA2S+ youth are four times more likely to attempt suicide than their peers. The Trevor Project estimates that more than 1.8 million LGBTQIA2S+ youth seriously consider suicide each year.

Inclusivity as Good Messaging

I presented this data at a school board meeting just one day after the bill was signed into law. I also publicly announced our plan to continue supporting our LGBTQIA2S+ students: Unless directed by the board otherwise, it is my formal request, on record, that we are going to do what is right for kids. And when we see a conflict between federal law and state law, we are going to double down to advocate for our youth. It’s not against parents; it’s for kids. We will not openly out any student because of one law if we know that is going to cause harm to that child. Unless dictated by the board otherwise, we will not participate in anything that we think will subject students to further discrimination or increase their self-harm.

The board fully supported my request, and our decision made waves through the community, garnering public attention and inspiring dialogues around the pivotal role of school districts in fostering cultures of acceptance. While some viewed this as a difficult choice because of potential legislative and community backlash, our standard in Fargo Public Schools is to always do what is right for kids. We believe this was an easy decision to make—and the right one.

As we continue to uphold inclusivity in our schools, we are not just molding a generation of empathetic citizens. We are also heightening our district’s appeal as a vibrant, inclusive, and successful educational community.

Naturally, this is a great play in terms of marketing our schools.

Embracing inclusivity should be seen not as a liability, but as a strategic asset that can significantly enhance a district’s appeal to prospective families and talented educators. And while marketing isn’t the primary reason behind this decision, we are proud to share this message of inclusivity with our community and others.

When a district actively champions the rights and wellbeing of all its students, it sends a robust message to the community, prospective families, and potential employees.

It says, Here is a place where you belong, where your identity is respected and your contributions are valued. This powerful message pulls in students seeking acceptance and attracts a pool of dedicated, empathetic educators and staff—critical components for a thriving school district.

But the impact of our decision isn’t confined to the hallways of Fargo Public Schools. Our approach nurtures a culture of respect, understanding, and open dialogue among students, staff, and the larger community. It creates fertile ground for cultivating not just academic excellence but also social empathy and civic responsibility, attributes essential for the leaders of tomorrow. It’s naive to disenfranchise kids for 18 years—to tell them they can’t be who they are—and then expect them to come back and join the workforce. We are telling our community that because we recognize implicit bias, we have a responsibility to explicitly advocate for those who feel like they don’t belong, whether at school or in the workplace.

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FPS has received a lot of attention regarding our position, but we haven’t shied away from it. Using a data-driven approach to support our stance has only strengthened our commitment to inclusivity. So we always point to the many ways our district has put this standard into practice.

By doing this in Fargo, we’re continually working to create a culture of belonging where all students feel safe and respected. This is evident in our school climate surveys, which show that the majority of our students feel supported by their teachers and peers.

For example, we explicitly communicate our FPS Philosophies, including our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion for all staff and students. These guiding philosophies are outlined on our website with supporting statements that cite research and legal precedence. They include policies like incorporating LGBTQIA2S+ people and issues into our schools’ curricula, providing materials in our libraries that are supportive of this community, and giving teachers the freedom to discuss these philosophies during class time. We have also implemented several initiatives across the district to support transgender and nonbinary students, such as providing gender-neutral bathrooms and allowing students to use their preferred pronouns.

For far too long, LGBTQIA2S+ students and staff members have felt the impacts of systems rooted in implicit bias. But I’m proud to say that since we began overtly communicating our advocacy for this community, I’ve had a variety of interactions with stakeholders who expressed a greater sense of belonging in our schools. I’ve had the good fortune of hearing direct accounts of trans students choosing to enroll in our schools because of our stance. And I even had a school board member write to me about one of our students, a family member of his, who said they felt very supported by their teachers in FPS.

We want people to come here if this is where they feel safe.

This has been a clear message of FPS for years. In fact, we were the first school district in North Dakota to hire a director of diversity, equity, and inclusion. More recently, we renamed that position to the director of educational justice. After all, that’s what we’re doing: We’re working to guarantee educational justice and success for everyone.

This is something to be proud of and to publicize. So as superintendent, I take every opportunity I can to amplify our message and to cement the notion that embracing inclusivity is not a choice, but a duty. I recently shared part of our story on the TEDxFargo stage, and in 2022, I co-authored a letter to every Florida educators association, inviting teachers impacted by Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill to come to Fargo Public Schools. We aren’t perfect, but we like to share the many ways FPS strives to welcome, embrace, and celebrate everyone.

An Opportunity, Not a Challenge My journey as the superintendent of Fargo Public Schools has been a testament to the power of prioritizing student safety and inclusivity. Even when it means navigating the complex interplay between federal and state laws, schools are responsible for the well-being of their students, and we should never shy away from making bold decisions when necessary.

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As a result of our commitment to doing the right thing for students, Fargo Public Schools has seen a number of positive outcomes. We’ve added students seeking acceptance to our enrollment, and we’ve recruited talented new staff because of our explicitly stated values. At the start of this school year, I was approached by multiple new staff members who all chose to come work for FPS because of our advocacy and inclusivity. They went out of their way to let me know they’d left other employers or turned down other opportunities because they so strongly believed FPS was the right organization for them.

To my peers in school leadership, let our story serve as a clarion call. I urge you to envision inclusivity not as a challenge, but as an opportunity to propel your schools into realms of unparalleled success and societal impact.

It is imperative to foster district cultures rooted in respect, understanding, and inclusivity—ones that transcend legislative dichotomies. Here in Fargo Public Schools, we’re proving it’s possible to align moral imperatives with pragmatic district operations.

We will not back down from our commitment to every student in our district. Like their classmates, transgender and nonbinary students deserve to feel safe and supported at school and in their communities. Doing the right thing is not always easy, but it’s always worth it.

When schools value and create a sense of belonging for all students, everyone benefits.

BY COREY WHALEY

Addressing Absenteeism Through Community Connection

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mong the myriad challenges school districts face in the ever-changing landscape of public education, chronic absenteeism has proven to be a powerful adversary. The U.S. Department of Education found that during the 2021-22 school year, 66% of the nation’s students attended schools with high or extreme levels of absenteeism. That means nearly 14.7 million students were chronically absent. And in the 2022-23 school year, chronic absences remained much higher than pre-pandemic levels, with only a small improvement in overall rates.

According to the Department of Education, any student who misses 10% of the school year is considered chronically absent— and if you break it down, that’s only a couple of days a month in most districts. But when it comes to learning, every hour counts.

Research shows that chronic absenteeism can be severely detrimental to student outcomes. In fact, it can negatively influence reading proficiency by third grade, and by sixth grade, it’s a leading indicator that a student will drop out of high school. It also disproportionately affects children living in poverty and can have negative impacts on student health.

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This challenge is all too familiar to staff at Attendance Works, a national and state initiative aiming to improve policy and practice around attendance and raise awareness of its impact on learning. “There are all these unexpected connections to the simple act of being in school every day,” says Cecelia Leong, Attendance Works’ vice president of programs. “And there are a lot of consequences downstream for our entire society. As more students become chronically absent, what’s going to happen to your community? You’re going to have fewer graduates ready to take on the jobs that drive your local economy.”

What can you do about absenteeism?

For starters, it’s vital for school leaders to create awareness around the importance of attendance. When families are informed about the negative effects of chronic absenteeism, they’re more likely to take attendance seriously and find strategies to help their children buck the trend. You can do this in fun, creative ways that make students excited to come to school.

Secondly, it’s about making sure your students have what they need to show up. According to an Attendance Works analysis, high-poverty schools are more likely to experience particularly extreme levels of chronic absenteeism. That means at least 30% of students in these schools are chronically absent. This correlation cannot be overstated or overlooked. If families are struggling or under-resourced, school attendance is more likely to suffer. It’s up to your district to find out what information and support these families need.

Chronic absenteeism isn’t an easy thing to fix, and it’s not an issue you can change overnight. But equipped with the right strategies, your schools can encourage and empower your community to support positive attendance habits. “Chronic absence is a problem that can be solved,” says Leong. So let’s look at how you can start to piece this puzzle together for your schools.

Raise awareness on the importance of attendance.

“I think families oftentimes don’t realize how quickly absences add up,” says Dr. Margaret Marotta, superintendent of Haverhill Public Schools in Massachusetts. “They think a day here or there doesn’t matter. But that very quickly becomes chronic absenteeism.”

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When Marotta took the helm in 2018, Haverhill’s chronic absence rates were already concerning—but the pandemic pushed them to all-new heights. “COVID did a number on us,” she says. “And it’s still very hard.”

Haverhill has an incredibly diverse student population from a variety of backgrounds. For example, some Haverhill students miss the first few weeks of school after spending the summer with relatives in the Dominican Republic because airfare back to Boston is much less expensive in late September. Others miss class because they’re translating for their parents or taking care of their younger siblings. And, as in so many other districts, some students are struggling with mental health or poverty and may not have the supports they need to maintain healthy school attendance.

“So there are a lot of reasons why our kids miss school,” Marotta says. “And even though our absence numbers went down last year, they’re still not where we want them to be.

We want to attack this because we see a heavy correlation between our lowest-performing students and chronic absenteeism.”

That’s why Haverhill engages students and families through Attendance Works’ annual Attendance Awareness Month each September. They partner with Haverhill Promise, a city campaign for grade-level reading that works with the district and community to increase reading proficiency. “These campaigns bring a lot of awareness to people who don’t know what chronic absenteeism is,” says Dr. Jessica Kallin, the executive director of Haverhill Promise. “They may not know the effect that attendance has on academic success, on reading proficiency, and on so many other areas—so these campaigns bring in a lot of new partners and new voices of support.”

The theme of this year’s awareness campaign, “Showing Up Together,” asked schools to rally their students, families, and communities to collectively address the effects of interrupted learning. “We began our campaign with a press release reaching out to our state and local delegations, to local leaders, and to school committee members,” Kallin tells us. “And we put together marketing materials centered around our message that this is a collaboration between community members and our schools.”

the district can raise their daily average attendance rate by two percentage points over the course of the school year, those buckets will be filled with Gatorade at next year’s event. “I’m willing to do anything to help our students improve their academic outcomes,” Lathan tells us.

On top of the buzz this event created, Springfield is always working to encourage improved attendance. “We’re spotlighting schools’ attendance improvements from month to month, and we take around traveling trophies for every division—elementary, middle, and high school,” Lathan says.

“We have an outstanding team, and they have really been able to get buy-in with this whole concept.”

Outside of press releases and social media marketing, Haverhill also shared informational videos and provided families with materials to help them grow awareness at home.

Like many districts, Haverhill used resources found on the Attendance Works website, such as “Student Attendance Success Plans.” These printable handouts have calendars and tips to help families track their children’s school attendance. “The calendars are a big asset,” Kallin says.

One critical element of Haverhill’s approach is ensuring their campaign is accessible to all families. So during the campaign, they pushed out attendance awareness materials in several languages. “That’s important—sharing this information with families who come from other countries with different educational norms and making sure they’re aware of our expectations,” Marotta says.

Haverhill Promise also engages students and families at inperson events, from handing out flyers at book giveaways to discussing the importance of going to school at local farmers markets or the annual River Ruckus festival. “We’re trying to weave this thread throughout what we’re already doing,” Kallin says. “We always try to point out that missing just two days a month is chronic absenteeism, and we share how families can help their students succeed.”

When Missouri’s Springfield Public Schools held their communitywide State of the Schools event in August 2023, their new approach to promoting attendance awareness stole the show. After buckets of balloons were emptied over her head by school board members, Superintendent Dr. Grenita Lathan announced a districtwide attendance challenge. If

Springfield’s leadership team has also been highlighting best practices around attendance and positive behavior throughout the year. They encourage their community to be a part of raising awareness. “If you have a marquee or social media…remind them that attendance is crucial,” Lathan told the crowd after announcing the challenge. “We are educating your future workforce. You have skin in the game just like we do.”

Keeping this top of mind, Springfield recently gave out attendance awareness yard signs to local businesses.

“This is a very collaborative community,” Lathan says. “It’s a community that supports our public schools, and they want to do whatever they can to ensure we are successful— because that means our community will be successful.”

Respond to your families’ needs.

For California’s Roseville City School District (RCSD), efforts to promote better school attendance hit a wall post-pandemic. In the past, many districts have tried focusing their communications around school funding—reminding families that sending their kids to school was necessary to keep districts up and running. But they didn’t have much success.

“It’s a terrible marketing strategy,” says Jessica Hull, the district’s executive director of communication and community engagement. “We have found that it has the reverse impact, often guilting parents, and it actually may cause them to care less about attendance.”

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Photo courtesy of Springfield Public Schools school attendance. “We’ve had to completely change our perspective because of what happened during those years,” Hull says.

The first hurdle to clear was the confusion around school attendance that the shutdown and remote learning had exacerbated. Now families were unsure of the rules around attendance—like whether their child should come to school with a cough or runny nose, or how long they should wait to return after a positive COVID test.

Secondly, the pandemic had changed the way some parents and guardians viewed experiences outside of school, like vacations or trips to see extended family. “Since the pandemic, we’ve seen a shift where people believe that family experiences are more valuable than anything else, including attending school,” Hull says. As a result, many families no longer consider school attendance a top priority, opting instead to take trips during the school year or let their kids miss class for family time.

Finally, Hull has spoken with many families with young children who have developed the mindset that missing school doesn’t matter much. “Because school isn’t mandatory until age 6, our TK and kindergarten families especially didn’t realize that these initial grades are so important to learning,” Hull explains. “This is when students learn the building blocks for fundamental skills like reading.”

In response to this confusion, RCSD created a new attendance campaign called “Every Day Matters.” This initiative aims to ensure that all district families have the 58

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information and resources necessary to address whatever challenges are prohibiting positive attendance behavior.

As part of the campaign, the district shares vital information to drive home the importance of attendance. This information is pushed out in the form of infographics, fact sheets, and advice for families on how to encourage and track their children’s attendance.

“Our focus is that students need to be in school because they need to be learning,” Hull says. “They need to be in a healthy environment; getting breakfast and lunch provided to them if they need it; getting social-emotional support in a safe, happy place like our schools.” One thing the campaign never mentions is school funding. “That money piece is for districts to worry about—it’s not the responsibility of parents or guardians,” Hull adds.

The crux of this campaign is the district’s “Every Day Matters” webpage, which can be found through a header link on their homepage. This comprehensive page details the importance of attendance and the dangers of chronic absenteeism while also connecting families to vital resources they may need—all organized by topic. Sections such as Nutrition, Transportation, and Counseling point families toward supports from the district or community. There’s even a glossary to help parents better understand RCSD’s attendance notices and policies. The site also lists Hull’s contact information and encourages families to reach out if they have more questions.

So far, “Every Day Matters” has been a success. By listening to their community’s needs and addressing them head-on, RCSD is helping more kids regularly show up to school.

“We are increasing attendance, which means students are in school. They’re learning and getting the supports they need,” Hull tells us. “I’m really excited that we can continue to see growth and that other districts can utilize these same resources to hopefully increase their own attendance.”

Showing Up Together In our conversations around attendance, a vital theme kept emerging: community. When it comes to addressing our country’s chronic absenteeism problem, the task can’t fall solely on the shoulders of students, families, or schools. If you want to make sure kids have the resources they need to get to school every day, it’s crucial to empower your entire community with an understanding of the importance of attendance.

By creating awareness around the negative impacts of chronic absenteeism, your schools can begin to combat this complex and troublesome issue. And by listening to your community and giving them the information and resources they need, you can empower families and students to understand why showing up matters.

Making I t R i g ht Customer Ser vice When There’s a Problem

By Brittany Ed

wardes Keil

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t happens all the time: A complaint comes in from a parent or guardian, and in the shuffle of various people trying to address the problem, something slips through the cracks. Maybe it’s because someone is out for a few days, or maybe the complaint was simply forgotten about.

In any case, the result is the same: Your district now has an angry family on its hands.

Fielding customer service complaints isn’t new for schools, but the environment around it has certainly changed.

Where families may have once felt satisfied with letting a school secretary know about a minor issue—such as an absence being incorrectly recorded—they now have higher expectations. Parents and guardians don’t just want their problems solved; they want to be made happy immediately.

According to Veronica Sopher, a Texas-based school communications professional, shifts in technology have transformed the way customers interact with companies.

And when it comes to schools, your families and students are your customers. “We live in an Amazon Prime society,” Sopher explains. “When something happens, we want it fixed, and we want it fixed right then.” But for schools—who are rarely staffed with the kind of customer service personnel private companies can afford—immediate customer satisfaction is sometimes impossible. Thankfully, a few leaders in the industry are offering advice to help your team field even the most difficult customer service complaints.

Part of Something Bigger First things first: Customer service doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s part of the broader customer experience. While customer service refers to the direct interactions you have with your community—often initiated by them when they have a problem—customer experience is something more.

Augie Ray is the research director for customer experience at research and advisory firm Gartner. According to Ray, one good way to improve customer service is to build positive and dynamic relationships with your audience.

“Whenever I speak about customer service, I always ask my audience about their last flight—the worst part of it and the best part,” Ray explains. He says people are eager to volunteer their bad experiences—tepid food, a noisy seatmate, or a long wait on the tarmac. When it comes to discussing the good things about their last flight, the audience is a little quieter, but some moments do stand out. Audience members might mention a surprisingly nice conversation or an unexpected upgrade.

But Ray is most curious about the one answer he’s never received. “In years and years of doing this, not one person has mentioned that their flight landed safely,” he says. “And yet, if you ask the pilots what their job is, that’s exactly what they’re going to say.”

For most schools, making families happy is not the numberone priority, nor should it be. Just as a pilot’s most important job is to land the plane safely, your district’s most important job is to provide kids with a high-quality education. However, these days, a great education alone isn’t enough to keep families happy. They also expect their overall experience with your schools to meet their high expectations. And in the age of school choice, keeping families happy is a necessity.

So—assuming you don’t have a customer service helpline monitored 24/7—what is the average school district supposed to do?

According to consulting firm McKinsey and Company, customer experience means “everything a business or an organization does to put customers first, managing their journeys and serving their needs.” This includes every touch point a stakeholder has with your district, from seeing a billboard on their commute to enrolling their kindergartener to voting in a bond referendum.

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Tip #1: Be clear about expectations with your community.

Tip #2: Create systems that anticipate problems.

It’s not your fault that people now expect their problems to be solved instantaneously, but it is a reality that you have to work with. This means it’s up to you to communicate clearly with your community about what’s realistic for them to expect— and what’s not. According to Sopher, this is the number-one challenge school districts must overcome to foster patience and understanding from their stakeholders.

While training your community can be helpful, it’s just one side of the equation. You also have to build capacity in your staff to know how to handle the inevitable problems that crop up. Sopher says that when preparing staff members at all levels to handle customer complaints, she first makes sure that everyone has systems to help make customer service more manageable. After all, customer service is challenging, and given the sheer volume of families many teachers and staff members interact with, it can take lots of time.

“When we onboard families, we let them know that our staff works hard throughout the school day to build positive experiences for students,” Sopher explains, “but that means that we’re not always sitting in front of our computers waiting for complaints to come in.” Sopher knows that positive customer service starts at enrollment—and maybe even before. When new families enroll, it’s important to set standards for how they can best interact with your district.

For Sopher, it’s important to give your families realistic timelines for when staff members will get back to them. “I let them know that they will hear back from someone within 48 hours,” she explains. “But that means that if they email one person, they need to wait before taking it up another level.”

Sopher also communicates to families that the fastest way to get their problem solved is to work with the people closest to the issue. “If it’s an issue at the classroom level, a teacher can solve it within a day or two, and a principal can solve it within a week. But the superintendent won’t likely get to it for a while because they’ll have to investigate the problem first,” Sopher says. Families must understand that a little patience can actually result in a quicker resolution.

For a society trained to “ask for the manager” when they want to get things done, this is quite a perspective shift, but it can help leverage your stakeholders’ desire for efficiency. If they know patience is the fastest way to get what they want, they’re more likely to be okay with waiting.

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While some larger districts use internal ticketing software to manage complaints, smaller districts must rely on more decentralized processes. That’s why Sopher recommends two actions to every staff member: Check your email at least twice a day, and set up an auto-response for outside contacts that explains this practice. “Every single one of your staff members should have an auto-response,” Sopher says.

“This way, families immediately know that their emails have been received and when they can anticipate hearing back.”

The private sector is pretty good at this. Think back to the last time you emailed a company with a complaint. Chances are, you got a response giving you an idea about when you’d hear back from them. The goal isn’t to automate every aspect of communication, but to make sure no one feels unheard.

Take this scenario for example—a parent reaches out to a principal via email about a problem with the timing of soccer tryouts. The principal forwards it to the athletic director, who makes a note to talk to the soccer coach, who happens to be out sick. The problem is being addressed, but since the parent hasn’t heard back, they assume that their email was lost in someone’s inbox. So they needlessly escalate their complaint further—all because no one initially told them their email had been received.

Sopher also trains staff on one simple expectation: If they’re the ones families reach out to first, they’re the ones responsible for making sure the problem gets resolved— even if they can’t resolve it themselves. Sometimes, a parent might reach out to a teacher about an issue that a counselor can handle. Still, it falls on the teacher to make sure that the counselor takes ownership of the problem and, eventually, that it is resolved. “It’s easy for things to fall off someone’s plate as they shift ownership,” Sopher explains. “So we have to make sure we’re playing as a team.”

Tip #3: Know what matters and what’s a distraction.

While happy students and families are important for every district, not every complaint is an immediate cause for concern. To know what’s actually a problem and what’s more of a distraction, you need to understand what matters to your community—and what doesn’t.

“When I talk to companies, we talk a lot about figuring out which product complaints are actionable and which should be safely ignored,” Ray explains. “You want to find ways to move beyond the old adage, The squeaky wheel gets the grease.” For districts, this mindset can keep your staff from being mired in constant reactivity because it requires conversations and consensus about which complaints aren’t problems to be solved. This is especially true in an era where some complaints speak more to political distractions than what’s actually happening within a district.

While some stakeholders may be resistant to not getting their way, saying simply, “We hear you, but we’re going a different direction,” is better than nothing. For example, let’s say a community member complains that children are playing too loudly at school bus stops in the morning and asks that students wait in their parents’ cars until the bus arrives. District leadership decides that, instead, the most appropriate approach is to simply ask bus drivers to remind students to be mindful of their behavior at bus stops. If the community member is notified that their problem was taken seriously, they are more likely to accept the resolution, even if they disagree with it.

Allowing solutions to be owned at the lowest level possible also builds a culture of trust within your district. More often than not, it’s the principal who can make the final decision when an individual family is unhappy with a situation. Families should understand when a final decision has been made, and that they aren’t likely to get traction if they try to push the issue farther up the chain of command. For example, if a superintendent has built the expectation that all concerns about grades should be handled at the school level, they will need to stand behind whatever decision a principal makes in regard to that issue. Districts should think carefully about what decisions they’re comfortable with staff members owning at each level and how to ensure that everyone is on the same page.

Strong customer service builds strong school cultures.

As every teacher knows, no issue with a student or family is truly resolved until everyone involved can have a restorative conversation that sets the tone for a return to normalcy. The same is true when it comes to customer service concerns with your families.

Continued communication is powerful, especially when people don’t expect it. Create a practice in your district where any parent who complains receives a follow-up at some point later on to see if the solution is still working. This communicates that you care all the time—not just when they’re bringing something to your attention.

If you scroll through positive reviews about good customer service experiences online, you’ll notice that most of the anecdotes praise companies for having resolved problems well. In fact, according to a study from the Journal of Marketing, nearly 25% of the positive experiences customers cite with companies stemmed from an initial failure on the company’s part. Sometimes, recovering well after a failure generates more goodwill for your brand than if there had never been a problem in the first place.

This means that issues brought to your district’s attention aren’t just fires to be put out; they’re opportunities to positively impact how someone thinks and feels about your schools. They’re touch points. If your district’s goal is to get to a place where no one ever has a complaint, you’re probably not going to get there. But you can make it your goal to resolve every customer concern in a way that builds a stronger brand for your district.

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