What tool do you feel is the most effective means of reaching the widest audience|Legit essays

Warner, C. (2009). Promoting Your School (3rd ed.). SAGE Publications, Inc. (US). https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/books/9781452261188

Chapter 1: The Foundation of Success

“If you’re the only one who knows something, it’s a secret.”

In days past, schools did not always need solid communication and public relations programs. The school was there, the teachers were there, parents sent their children, the law said so—and that was it!

Half a century ago, more than three-quarters of the families in both rural and urban communities across the United States had children in public schools. Today, fewer than one-quarter of families have children in public schools, leaving many community members with no direct line of communication with their local schools.

Thus, the traditional modes of communication from the school to the public—report cards, parent-teacher conferences, calls home when a child misbehaved, open house, flyers announcing special events, a newsletter, sporadic media coverage of special activities—were deemed adequate for keeping the community informed. But today, these methods, although still important pieces of a comprehensive communication plan, are simply not sufficient to build the broad-based support schools need to be successful.

The rightness of your “cause” (your position, your district’s mission) aside, people just aren’t going to take your word for it anymore. They want to see results, accountability, proof. Can you blame them for being skeptical in the face of the current, widespread public furor over the crisis in American education? However, it has been demonstrated that, over the long haul, communities will support a school system that exhibits a solid, measurable commitment to quality.

As a professional educator or public education supporter, you know that in most schools throughout the country, most educators are doing a good job with most students. Yet the public’s knowledge of and confidence in public education does not always reflect these achievements. It is up to you to be the principal communicator, to make sure your community has the best possible image of your school, because it is their school, too. You must strive for constituency “buy-in.”

Public schools are sizable financial enterprises. Many school districts, especially in rural areas, are their community’s largest employers. School board members and administrators are responsible for managing large amounts of tax dollars. With that fiscal accountability comes the responsibility of informing federal, state, and local taxpayers (the stockholders in the enterprise of public education) in honest terms about how their money is spent, how their investment is managed, and what return they are getting from their dollars.

The siren song of “No new taxes!” is strong in this economic and political climate of deficit reduction and fiscal restraint. After all, it is easier to rationalize withholding financial, political, and even moral support from an institution than from the individual taxpayer who is struggling to pay the mortgage or to obtain affordable health care.

The school that takes its communication role seriously is the school that will receive the greatest public support when a program need arises or a crisis occurs. Public confidence cannot be bought. It must be earned through the daily actions of the entire school family and through a planned communication effort involving all education supporters, from the local school principal and PTA president to the district superintendent and the governing board.

THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS What is communication? It is an exchange of information between people. Conveying information alone does not involve an exchange; it is simply the act of providing someone with data, a one-way flow. When we communicate with someone, what are we really attempting to do? Most of the time, we are trying to change or mold that person’s attitude about something so that it becomes congruent with our own. Information is disposable; it can be presented, reviewed, or discarded—and with no attempt at changing attitudes, it may be simply a one-shot process. But you must make communication and attitude formation a continuous process.

Everyone involved in education is a communicator—a good one or a not-so-good one. As a principal or other educational leader, one of your major challenges is to build a schoolwide team of people who can effectively carry a positive message into the community about your school or district.

The communication process begins with determining what is currently being communicated about your school and deciding whether or not this is really what you wish to communicate. It then requires developing a strategy with an action plan that targets the opinion leaders within your community. These people will add their own perceptions to what is communicated an