Point of View Amanda Simpson, Coppell

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.

The goal of this strategy was to increase trust and positive engagement with the CISD community. Determining the success of these efforts is through the data that the Communications and Community Engagement Department collects.

The CISD communications team uses analytics to track open and click rates for both its internal and external newsletters, as well as clicks on links on the website and social media engagements. Interactive QR codes in the CISD biannual “Our Story” magazine also measure engagement.

Data from August through the end of January shows that our Facebook reach has increased 52 percent and our Instagram reach has increased 86 percent over the previous year. In addition, our open rates for our external “Informed” newsletter increased 24 percent to around 65 percent as a result of this strategy. This data is showcased via a visual dashboard on display within the department and shared with the superintendent and school board to illustrate the success and value of the communications staff.

Like many other school districts in Texas, employee morale was an issue that CISD was working to address. As part of this positive story approach, the CISD communications used its internal newsletter “The Coppell ISD Connection” to recognize employees in conjunction with national celebrations such as Principals Month, School Counseling Week, etc. Brief questionnaires were also sent to staff to share quotes and information about themselves that could then be moved over to a social media post thanking staff, including bus drivers, custodians and substitute teachers. Small gestures of appreciation can mean so much to hard-working employees.

Another tactic used by the communications team was to pitch local media to cover stories in CISD schools. The staff realized that our local television reporters were also looking to cover education stories that did not involve masking or other issues. When media were invited back into schools, positive media coverage began to happen to cover the great things happening in CISD schools. Stories local media covered for CISD included students at Denton Creek Elementary writing thank you cards for their bus driver for Veteran’s Day, Mockingbird Elementary students raking leaves for neighbors for the “Great Rakesving'' and students at Cottonwood Creek Elementary school taking the bus to Coppell High School to have high school students help elementary learners write letters to Santa. The later story aired at the top of a local 6 p.m. broadcast, the highest-rated TV news program in Dallas/FortWorth reaching nearly 1 million viewers.

In addition to helping achieve an important goal of the CISD Communications Comprehensive Strategic Communications Plan, this focus on accentuating the positive in terms of stories has had another important benefit. CISD communications team members, like many school district public relations professionals in Texas, have experienced burnout due to the pandemic, upset parents and community members and one crisis after another. The shift to focus on positive storytelling has helped the CISD communications staff be able to remember the “why” behind what we do, which has also improved our morale.