What TSPRA Means to Me Hear from the

by Riney Jordan Author, Motivational Speaker TSPRA Member since 1981

Oh, my goodness! Sixty years! TSPRA has been around for 60 fast-paced years!

The year was 1962 when a handful (make that a small handful) of visionary school public relations practitioners gathered together and decided to make a Texas chapter of the National School Public Relations Association.

I wish I had been there, but as the Texas bumper sticker says, “I got there as quickly as I could.”

The Grapevine-Colleyville ISD Board of Trustees decided in 1981 that the district was big enough to create a Department of Communications. Because I had spent seven years in radio during high school and college, they called me in, told me about the new position and said, “Son, you’ve got the job.”

Experience? None. Qualified? No way. Excited about the possibilities? Oh, yeah! I’ll never forget talking to the superintendent the next day.

“What do you see as our most immediate need?” I asked.

“Morale. We’ve got a morale problem. See what you can do to fix it!” he snapped. I thought at great lengths about how to solve this morale problem.

“A family! That’s what we are! One, big happy family. And what do families like to do? Eat! So, I’ll put together the first ever GCISD Family Cookbook!” (You read that right! I know. It’s unbelievable, isn’t it?)

If anyone ever needed help with school public relations, it was me. And not long after I had started collecting recipes from my school family, I heard about TSPRA.

I definitely needed a break from typing recipes eight hours a day, so I decided to go to my first conference in Austin, Texas.

And upon arrival, I was immediately blown away. First of all — the members! They were like me! They loved people. They were extraverts. They were fun. They loved being creative. And they were passionate about their profession. Wow!

Those guys became some of my best friends and still are today after forty years!

Steve Knagg, Larry Ascough, Annell Todd, Linda Queen, Judy Kreihn, Dean Angel, Shirley Brothers, Jon Dahlander, Reavis Wortham, Ann Spear, Pasqual Gonzalez, Cindy Randal, Kirk Lewis, Bonnie Ellison. Oh, I could fill this page with names of hundreds of TSPRA friends over the years.

Then I looked over the sessions. It was like nothing I’d ever seen. There were experts who gave tips on how to deal with the media, how to design brochures, how to do slide shows with a dissolve unit and on and on and on.

I was hooked!

If I ever had a problem, a TSPRAn who had been through a similar problem was only a phone call away.

Each year, I carried an extra suitcase to the conference to bring home one of each of the publications from school districts across the state. When I retired, I had file cabinets full of examples of newsletters, school calendars, annual reports and so much more. If I ever had a problem, a TSPRAn who had been through a similar problem was only a phone call away.

(By the way, I know I’ve used far too many explanation points in this article, but I am still as excited today as I was then!)

When I first began attending the annual TSPRA conference, we might have had 30 - 50 attendees. As the years passed, that number grew … and continues to grow to this day.

Without a doubt, in my time in school PR I had some of the most enjoyable and productive years of my life. In 2019, I was awarded the President’s Award for “distinguished service to TSPRA.”

Who are we kidding? Every minute of service I might have done for TSPRA was learned through them. I knew nothing about school PR before I joined TSPRA, and quite frankly, if I went back to the conference today, I would be like a fledgling beginner. Sharing new techniques, strategies, methods and changes never stops with TSPRA.

Quite frankly, I cannot imagine how I would have survived without it.

Oh, in case you’re wondering how the cookbook turned out, it wasn’t bad, but I can’t say it did much to help morale. If anything, it might have hurt it a little. Let me explain.

One teacher sent in a recipe for a cake that she called “Better than Sex.” Well, being the good school PR person that I was, I was not about to publish it with that name. So, like any of you who strive daily to keep the image of your district as professional and ethical as you can, I did the only thing I knew to do.

I changed the title of her recipe from “Better Than Sex” to “Second Only to Heaven.”

She was not happy with me.

So, I baked it and took it to her, and she agreed. The new name made the new cake taste even better!

“All’s well that ends well.”