Beyond the Masks: Pivoting Back to Telling Positive Public Education Stories
by Amanda Simpson Director of Communications Coppell ISD
To mask or not to mask? To offer virtual learning or only be in person? These were the hot-button questions Coppell ISD and other Texas school districts faced at the beginning of the 2021-2022 school year. As the COVID-19 crisis continued into its third year, the CISD Communications and Community Engagement Department team made a conscious decision to move beyond the masks and virtual learning debates and focus on sharing positive public education stories with its community. The CISD communications team felt it was time to pivot back to telling the stories that showcase the good of what is happening in our schools every day. One crucial tactic to accomplish this goal was to no longer use social media to share district news with the community and instead focus on only positive feature stories. Recognizing that CISD social media channels, especially Facebook, could become a hotbed of negative comments on certain issues, especially on masks and other pandemic items, the district’s communications team decided to use only the website and direct emails to families and employees to share news items. All our other communication channels would be primarily focused on student and teacher achievements and feature stories. The team developed a dynamic editorial calendar to plan these stories and where they would appear. Staff worked with CISD schools to plan story walks, where a member of the communications team would walk a campus with a principal and administrator to discover good stories to share.
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Spring 2022 | www.TSPRA.org
