Pattonville School District leverages community support.

Missouri’s Pattonville School District is fairly small—about 6,000 students total. “Everybody graduates from one high school, and I think that helps us a lot,” says Kelly Gordon, APR, Pattonville’s chief communications officer. “From an alumni perspective, we all went through the same experience. You might go to a different elementary or middle school, but in the end, you graduate as a Pattonville Pirate.”

Gordon graduated from Pattonville in 2006, and while this is her first year in her current position, she’s worked with the district’s communications department for the last 12 years. She credits the tremendous support the district enjoys in part to that experience that so many people in the community share. “Our community is very, very supportive,” she says. “They want the district to do well, and they want students to do well.” In April 2022, Pattonville successfully leveraged that strong support into the passage of a $111 million no-tax-rate increase bond issue.

Gauge your community support on the front end.

Before Pattonville went out for their 2022 bond, they wanted to make sure it reflected the community’s priorities. After internal feedback from schools on their wants and needs, the Pattonville team proposed a bond that would add classrooms to accommodate growing enrollment, improve security and maintenance, and provide much-needed updates to every school building in the district—all at no additional cost to local taxpayers.

“This was the most expensive bond issue we’d ever gone out for,” Gordon explains. “So we did a lot of research, multiple surveys, and some focus groups to figure out: Do we have the community’s support to pass this? Do people feel like the work that we’re proposing is the right type of work for their community? ”

The answer was a resounding “Yes.” After this research, the bond’s predicted pass rate was over 80%. “Having that research and knowing that people are going to be supportive helps,” says Gordon. “If you put all this work into your campaign, but people don’t want it, that work doesn’t matter.”

Let your community do the talking.

Having the community’s buy-in from the beginning helped shape the rest of Pattonville’s campaign. For starters, knowing the community was already on their side, they didn’t want to bombard people with too much information.

“We wanted people to have the details they needed to make an informed decision—but since we knew that we had a higher level of support, we didn’t want to over-communicate,” she says. “Sometimes that can annoy people, or make them feel like that communication is a waste of taxpayer dollars.” Plus, too much communication could raise awareness among any opposition, causing more naysayers to vote than would have otherwise.

Thanks to the district’s enthusiastic cadre of advocates, Pattonville didn’t have to do much to make word spread. “For the most part, we generally don’t have to jump in and explain a lot. Our community does it for us,” Gordon says. This doesn’t just save the district work—it’s also more effective.

After all, people trust their friends and family more than official communication from the district or the Vote Yes committee. “It sounds a lot better when a parent says, Yes, we do need that new track or that new gym ,” she explains.

According to Gordon, this kind of advocacy creates a level of support that transcends shared experiences, reaching people who may not have prior connections to the district. “We have so many people who speak positively about their experience or their child’s experience in the district, and without that, we might not have the same support,” she says. “Knowing that people have had that good experience makes a huge difference.”

Keep engaging your community.

When Election Day arrived, Pattonville’s bond passed with 79.4% support, just as predicted. Now, in the summer of 2023, construction projects are getting underway, and Pattonville is working to keep their community updated.

“A lot of our internal conversations, especially now that it’s summer, have been about the best ways to reach our families,” Gordon says. “We have three elementary schools and a middle school about to start construction on building additions, so we wrote a letter for those principals to send out to their families, letting them know what to expect.” This isn’t just about proving that the district’s making good on its promises; it’s also about simple logistics. “When they come back to school, we might have some construction that could impact entrance into the building,” Gordon explains. “We want to keep people informed about that as well.”

This goes for community members outside school campuses, too. For example, construction may cause the shutdown of a side road near one of the school sites—so Gordon and her team plan to connect with a nearby apartment complex that regularly uses that cut-through to give them a heads-up. “This was a significant investment for the community, so we want people to know that their money is having an impact,” she says. “But we also want to make sure that they’re not inconvenienced—or if they have to be, they know in advance that it’s going to happen.”

For Gordon, it all goes back to the importance of engaging the community—the same community that has supported the district every step of this journey.