PSBA’s communication partner,
The Communication Solutions Group, Inc
, reflected on its 32 years of work with Pennsylvania school districts to pinpoint the communication mistakes it has seen school districts make time and time again.
- Forgetting to give reporters advance notice about events you want them to cover. Gone are the days of newsrooms bustling with a dozen reporters. Most news operations now run on a skeleton staff of reporters and camera people. This means that they are rarely able to respond to last-minute invitations to cover events. Improve your chances of getting publicity by giving media outlets at least two weeks notice of an event or program you feel is newsworthy.
- Not internally communicating your school district’s branding guidelines. Let’s suppose your school district mascot is an animal – let’s say, a ram. Do you find that every school and department seems to be using their own version of the ram – some adorable and some frightening? You are not alone. All too often, your district’s visual brand identity gets overlooked or erroneously replicated by schools, clubs or departments trying to get information out to parents and students. Creating branding usage guidelines – and sharing them with all your schools and administrative departments – can help ensure consistency throughout your school district.
- Assuming ALL stakeholders understand what your school district is doing and why. Just because a decision about a new initiative is made at a school board meeting does not mean that everyone knows about it. Yes, parents and guardians might be in-the-know about board actions related to their kids’ schools. However, unless you communicate to all stakeholders, everyone else is in the dark. The end result could be the spread of inaccurate information. That is why it is so important to ensure that all district residents receive communication from your school district via press releases, your website, social media, or even a residential newsletter or annual report.
- Forgetting to call reporters back. School districts often have a love/dislike relationship with their local press depending upon the most recent news coverage they have received. Building a positive relationship with your local reporters makes them more likely to cover your good news (but please understand that an ethical reporter will never ignore your bad news). That relationship starts and thrives when you return their calls and meet their deadlines. Remember, returning a reporter’s call does not mean you need to answer their questions on the spot. You can simply ask when their deadline is and the reason for their call. Then, call them back when you are ready to respond by their deadline, and never after.
- Overcommunicating to the wrong audiences. How much you say and to whom really boils down to asking yourself two questions: Who is going to be impacted and what is the best communication method for reaching them? For example, if there is a lice outbreak in the kindergarten wing of a school, there is no reason to hold a press conference or to place an article in a residential newsletter. The audience that needs to know – the families of the kindergarteners and your staff – can be reached directly through your established notification system.
- Using educational jargon that the public does not understand. If you’re in the habit of abbreviating commonly used educational terms in your communication with external stakeholders, you are hindering your own efforts. If you write about or talk about your commitment to SWPBIS, for example, the audience receiving your communication will be completely lost unless you spell out and explain what School-Wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports are. The same is true for just about every education-specific term with its own acronym. Spell it out and explain it always.
- Thinking a school crisis does not require crisis communication. It is not a surprise that in the midst of a school district crisis, communication might take a backseat while the situation is being addressed. However, reporters have police scanners, students have cell phones and, before you know it, the story is out before you have had a chance to think about what to say. Drafting crisis communication promptly should be a priority. That is the precise reason why PSBA provides its members with 24/7 support for crisis and time critical issues. Hopefully, you don’t need the service often, but when you do, contact 1-833-PR4-PSBA or Hotline@PR4PSBA.org.
Learn more about PSBA Communications Support on myPSBA.
