CommunicationPlus - September 2015

Build early support for a levy or bond campaign

Build a foundation of support for schools with strong and frequent communications.

The success of a construction bond or levy campaign is tied closely to the relationships and trust we have built within our community. This takes time, sometimes years, to develop.

Engaging your community early and often is crucial to the successful passage of bond or levy campaigns. One of the most effective ways to gain support is to harness the power of the supporters who can tell your district’s story through their eyes. These third-party endorsements will be much more effective rather than trying to tell your story on your own with a singular perspective.

Who are these voices?

• students, staff and their families;
• friends and neighbors;
• the owners and employees of the businesses that staff frequent;
• l local elected officials;
• the real estate agents who sell homes in the school district;
• volunteers who spend countless hours in schools each year. Volunteers are your most consistent cheerleaders and advocates.

These are the voices of people who are already engaged and committed to schools. They are on budget and boundary committees. They volunteer for education foundation events and school fundraisers, sell popcorn at football games and are passionate about your mission to ensure every student is prepared for life after graduation.

If you are consistently telling your story to internal audiences, which include supporters listed above, this group is already well aware of your leaky roofs and decades-old science classrooms. They cheer for students during sporting events on tattered tracks and cracked tennis courts. They understand the cost of temporary modular classrooms that house students when enrollment exceeds classroom space. They see the struggles facing superintendents and business managers who must commit operating dollars to repair old schools that have lived long past their prime instead of hiring new teachers.

Build your network of support

It’s never too late to begin developing these key connections and relationships that may be the difference in the success or failure of a bond measure. Harness your supporters’ passion for schools and make them ambassadors by engaging them in teaching, learning and facilities planning.

Election law in most states does not allow public employees to advocate during elections. Your school supporters will be the people who can promote your finance measure. As school supporters, they will be your partners during a bond or levy campaign, backing the cause while the district conducts the informational campaign.

When planning a levy campaign, pay special attention to creating a firm separation between the internal and external campaign. Internal staff can provide fact-based information such as the age of a school building and the number of students expected to enroll in coming year. For example, the Ohio attorney general ruled that public officials may issue “communications designed to inform the public of

the consequences that are expected to follow from the passage or defeat of a particular levy” (1999 Ohio Atty. Gen. Ops. 99-030). However, they cannot advocate. Advocacy is an important role for the volunteer committee of supporters.

The informational campaign

Spread the word
Your informational team will consist of a variety of district team members, including the superintendent, operations manager and communications director. Be sure to keep all staff informed. They need to know what is going on so they can respond to questions. Pay special attention to keeping your classified staff members in the loop. Surveys often show they are among the most trusted sources of information in your district.

School supporters as campaign advocates
The advocacy committee will do a lot of the heavy lifting during campaign season. They will share with the community why voting for your bond makes good fiscal sense. It is never too early to start talking casually to potential committee members about your projected facility needs and how they can help when it is time to ask voters for support. There are a variety of ways that volunteers can help, including donating their design skills, printing services, event planning, fundraising and writing skills to the campaign. See team descriptions that follow.

The makeup of the advocacy committee will vary depending upon the community needs and volunteer resources. Having a noteworthy figurehead and a highly respected parent co-chairing the committee lends the campaign credibility. The committee also will need a treasurer. This key position is often ideal for a local leader in banking or finance.

It is equally important to ensure the committee has dedicated workers who are willing to do the small tasks it will take to win the overall vote. Campaigns are hard work. The number of people on the team doing the work often is a reflection of the level of support in the community. It’s important to have a large team of supporters.

Be sure to reach out to a diverse demographic and consider seeking representation from your unions. Employees are an excellent resource when it comes to sharing the message of why a bond project is so critical to ensuring student success. A union endorsement often opens the door to more active support among staff.

Keep everyone informed
Committee members will want to understand the needs of the district. Be sure to share the reasons for your decisions and the work that has taken place to identify your list of needs. Give members facility planning reports, deferred maintenance lists and enrollment projections. Share the information that is the basis for your bond or levy request. Walk them around your schools and facilities and show them how, with the financial support of the community, the life of buildings can be extended and tax dollars can be stretched.

Share population data forecasts and community feedback surveys and how these projects will positively impact the economy by awarding construction jobs in your communities and keeping those dollars local.

Start now
It’s important to begin work with the committee far in advance of the vote. Set up regular community presentations about your district and ask committee members to join your superintendent when he or she speaks to the Rotary, Elks, Soroptomists, League of Women Voters, chamber of commerce and other groups in the months leading up to the election.

Keep the connections after the election
Once your bond or levy has passed, make sure to celebrate the success and thank those who worked hard for the campaign. Consider hosting events at the new or renovated facilities as a way of honoring supporters who helped in your campaign. Continue to share information with this network of people and include the group in ongoing district activities. You will still need ambassadors for your district. It’s never too soon to start recruiting people to work on your next campaign.

Tips for building a strong team of support

Any school support is good support, but give special consideration to the skills your supporters may be able to bring to the team. The following are significant positions in a finance campaign:

Leadership/steering team
This committee will provide overall leadership and coordination of the campaign effort. The committee chairs sit on this team. Seek people with active involvement in the community or a large personal or professional network.

Finance and fundraising
This committee will be responsible for raising sufficient funds to meet the budget. Members should be comfortable asking for donations.

Marketing and public relations
This committee will be responsible for defining target audiences and developing media campaigns to reach those audiences. The committee will develop logos, slogans, written materials and other necessary mass media materials. This committee also will implement a visual campaign to assist in general awareness of the election.

Speakers bureau
This committee will coordinate with the district’s informational campaign efforts in providing appropriate volunteers to join staff at presentations to selected service organizations, trade or other associations and businesses.

Editorial and media visits
This committee will contact various editorial and media outlets to arrange for visits by committee members and district staff to discuss the measure.

Endorsements
This committee will work with selected citizens and/or citizen groups to provide supporting arguments for the voter’s pamphlet, social media and websites. In addition, the committee will seek endorsements from private and public organizations within the district, including cities, counties, parks, chambers of commerce and trade groups. This committee is responsible for soliciting and supporting citizens to write letters to the editor supporting the bond or levy measure.

Events
This group will be responsible for identifying events that reach targeted voter groups and staffing these events with volunteers. Events committee members will work with the marketing and public relations committee to tailor materials and messages that resonate with the attendees of these events.

Contributed by Alandra Johnson, communication specialist, and Julianne Repman, communication director, Bend-La Pine Schools, Ore.

Community engagement case study: Fort McMurray Public Schools tells its story and engages audiences in a fun way

Have you ever heard of Flat Stanley? Students all over the world have enjoyed the adventures of this fictional character from a children’s book series (www.flatstanleybooks.com). In the book, Stanley becomes accidentally flattened and decides to make the best of the situation. He does this in a number of ways, including being mailed to his friends in an envelope.

The story has inspired educators across the globe to create literacy opportunities for their students. After reading the book, students can create their own paper Stanley. Lessons include writing in a journal about where Stanley has been as he accompanies them over several days. Often, they mail Flat Stanley to destinations around the world.

Now Fort McMurray Public Schools in Alberta, Canada, is using the Flat Stanley idea in a new way to engage not only students, but the staff and community as well.

Introducing Flat Doug, a student and community engagement tool

“Flat Doug” came to life in the spring of 2015, with a striking resemblance to Doug Nicholls, superintendent of Fort McMurray Schools.

Flat Doug, a doll-sized paper cutout, travels from school to school upon request. The hosting teacher and students post on Twitter about Flat Doug’s activities. Teachers can ask Flat Doug to appear for a specific school event or to see something they are doing in the classroom. Visits are scheduled on Flat Doug’s website. He travels to schools by hitching a ride with maintenance staff or technicians who visit schools. School administrators or teachers also can pick him up on visits to the district office. He comes with instructions, so the teachers can post his adventures on Twitter (https://twitter.com/FMPSD_FlatDoug).

Connecting to schools through Flat Doug

“Flat Doug is going to be very knowledgeable,” Nicholls said jokingly. Nicholls does not use Flat Doug to replace his own personal visits to schools. Rather, Flat Doug has a different purpose.

“We liked the idea because we could see it would be a fun way to tell the story of our schools,” Nicholls said. “It’s great because Flat Doug can help us showcase the good work that happens in our schools: from transportation to maintenance to instruction. Flat Doug helps us tell the story from our own perspective and builds the pride of staff, students and the entire community. When people see him, it brings a smile to their face.”

Flat Doug made a number of stops last spring that included:

• visiting a third-grade toy and book exchange;
• observing how kindergarten students keep their lockers neat and tidy;
• watching a creative art lesson in an elementary school;
• helping students write thank you cards to parent volunteers;
• participating in a “culture” day;
• offering advice about a solar irrigation layout at a school.

Flat Doug’s modest start and quick rise to fame

District Technology Director Ali Syed came up with the idea for Flat Doug. Nancy Gauthier, communications coordinator, said, “Our technology department doesn’t just think outside the box. They live outside the box.” She said at first, Flat Doug just started showing up at school events, transported by technology staff. Then the district discussed the potential for Flat Doug to help schools tell good news stories in an engaging way. It formally became a district project.

“As a classroom teacher, I’ve used Flat Stanley before,” Syed said. “I thought having Flat Doug in our jurisdiction would give schools and teachers a vehicle to share what they want to communicate and take control of their own message.”

Flat Doug’s success happened faster than Syed expected. Fort McMurray Schools had planned on running the campaign as a pilot in the spring 2015, anticipating they would need to do professional development to help grow the campaign in the 2015-16 school year. However, the idea took off and educators and students are already embracing the initiative.

“It’s low energy and high impact,” Syed said. “Kids are excited, and when they meet the real superintendent, they’ll tell him they’ve already met him.”

Gauthier added, “Because of our location, it’s hard to bring everyone together physically. Flat Doug helps us share what’s happening with each other.”

Steps for setting up your own Flat Doug program

• Choose the person you want as your real-life model. It could be the superintendent, associate superintendent or someone else you choose. Pick someone who is outgoing and friendly in real life. That way, when students have an experience with the Flat character and meet the real-life person, the personality is consistent.

  Syed said kindergarten through third-grade students in Fort McMurray will sometimes view Flat Doug and the real Doug as the same person, or even as brothers.

  “Even high school students play on that too, telling the real Doug that they’ve met him before at an event,” Syed said. “Our superintendent is really good at playing along with that. You need that for this project to be successful.”

• Design the artwork. Get someone to draw a Flat character that looks like the real-life person. Keep in mind that young children will be viewing this character, so he or she should be friendly looking.
• Set up an account for sharing information. Fort McMurray Public Schools uses Twitter. Syed said Instagram would work, too. He does not recommend Facebook because it has a minimum age. That creates difficulties for younger children who want to view Flat Doug visits from their home computer or device.
• Create an online repository. Because Twitter can be cumbersome to use when going through past posts, it’s important to create an online repository for Flat Doug photos that can be easily accessed from classrooms across the jurisdiction. This way teachers can conveniently refer back to what has happened all year long. Fort McMurray uses Google sites as their repository.

  Syed said an unexpected benefit of this has been students are learning about how to use these online tools.

• Set expectations and rules, and communicate them. Set the dos and don’ts for your Flat Doug. In Fort McMurray, Flat Doug doesn’t leave school property — he doesn’t go home with students or on field trips. The district wishes to keep the focus on what is happening in its schools. Also, Fort McMurray has requested the photos posted to Twitter be of Flat Doug interacting with students rather than adults.

  Once you’ve set the rules, record those on a paper that travels with your Flat Doug. Post them to your online repository or another site that is used for communication.

• Designate who will coordinate Flat Doug’s visits and how he will get to those destinations. In Fort McMurray, Syed coordinates the visits. However, as Flat Doug’s schedule becomes filled in the fall, he is considering a separate online calendar that schools can access. Right now, the district’s technology and maintenance departments transfer Flat Doug to schools. School-based administrators who visit the district office sometimes help. Syed said jurisdictions could also use their interoffice mail system if it is available.

Contributed by Laurett Woodward, communications consultant

How to work effectively with a communications contractor

Districts, both large and small, often find that using an outside communications consultant is a good way to stretch a dollar when there is a short-term need for extra communications help. Districts often hire consultants when they are working on a bond issue or don’t require or want a full-time employee in the position.

Hiring a contractor isn’t just a matter of pushing a button. There are a few things you need to do to prepare.

Be sure to hire a professional

The school communications field is fairly close knit. It’s possible someone you know has worked with this person before. If not, ask for references. What was he or she like to work with? Did he or she meet deadlines? When mistakes happened, what did he or she do to fix the errors? What kind of attitude did the person have when told about the mistakes?

There’s an interesting dynamic for contractors who get a lot of work but not a lot of repeat work, according to Jay Remy, communications director for Salem-Keizer Public Schools in Salem, Ore.

“If someone has a long list of former clients but has a bad reputation because they don’t do good work, they may be the most aggressive about marketing themselves,” he said. “It’s important to check with other districts. You don’t want to just take the first person who comes around.”

You may not be as committed to a contractor as you would be to an employee, but that doesn’t mean you can skip this crucial aspect of the hiring process. You are outsourcing because you simply don’t have the time to handle communications on your own. The last thing you need is to deal with the avoidable stresses that result from not doing your due diligence.

Checking references may seem like an obvious step, but you would be surprised how many districts fail to make sure the person they are hiring is up for the job.

Know your message and style

With more and more required of district staff, it’s possible you were tossed into the communications role with little chance to take a breath and ask yourself how well your communications are aligned with your district’s goals. With a contractor coming on board, now is the time to make that a focus.

Marcia Latta, an Oregon communications consultant, recommends that everyone be on the same page from the beginning. “They need to lay out what the goal is, really clearly, and they need to talk to the other people on the team,” she said.

Taking the time to decide how you craft your message and what you want your message to be is an opportunity, as well as a necessity.

Remy suggests that you meet with your team before the hiring process to determine what you want to accomplish. “Set out some short- and long-term goals, rather than saying ‘we just want communications help’,” he said. “Pick some goals that align with the strategic or business plan for your district.” Letting the rest of the district staff know what the plan is also paves the way for open and trusting communication with the consultant.

He notes that if you aren’t clear on what you want specifically, you can’t expect an outside contractor to magically give it to you. “If you just need better communications in general, you might as well hire full- time staff and bring that person onto the management team.”

How available are your resources?

Making sure your contractor has what he or she needs to do the job is more than just the message. Your consultant will need to have access to the people and information that make crafting the message possible.

“If it’s a bond campaign, then who are the people who will be key players, and who has the data about the finances and voter records?” Latta said. “Consultants can get stalled when there is a deadline and the information is difficult to get because it isn’t a priority for other staff in the district.”

This goes back to making sure that your district’s staff is on board with your communications message. If district staff understand how the consultant’s job is tied to district goals and their own roles in the plan, they will be more responsive to your contractor’s requests for information.

“If you have people in your school district who don’t understand the project and are not as forthcoming as they need to be, you as the district staff need to make sure you get there ahead of time,” Remy said. “You need to say they are going to be working for me and they are going to need this information so you need to be responsive.”

Stay in touch

It’s tempting to think that hiring a communications consultant means that you will be able to simply hand over those responsibilities and focus on other priorities. You will need to keep a hand in the work, especially at the beginning.

Your consultant wants to do the best work for you, but like an employee, he or she needs feedback. You also should know that it will take time to manage the relationship, no matter your contractor’s professionalism and how much time you spend giving that person specific goals to work with.

Remy notes that when the manager is too hands off, the result can be sticker shock. “When you’re managing a consultant, you need to check in early and often and make sure they’re taking the amount of time and expense that you think they are,” he said. “I let them know it’s important to check in with me if this is taking more than the hours we thought it would, or if you are heading off in a different direction.”

He notes that it is easy to get busy with other work, but it’s important to stay on top of billable hours. Don’t be surprised. While hiring a consultant can be one of the best decisions your district makes, like all big decisions, it requires a good plan and continued supervision.

Tips for ensuring your contractors have access to district news

As a long-term consultant who operates remotely, it’s important for me to develop multiple channels of getting good school district news from my clients for newsletter articles and press releases. Here are a few ways I do that:

School staff
School counselors are great sources of news. They know which students applied to scholarships and those who are participating in after-school activities that deserve recognition.

School secretaries
Secretaries also are great sources of information. Be sure to get a firm introduction from the superintendent or communications director. Otherwise, the secretary might be reluctant to share student data. Secretaries typically have their finger on the pulse of the school, so it is important to build relationships with them.

Board members
If you want district-wide news, board members are a great place to look. With experience in running for office, board members realize the need to share great accomplishments. If you can develop these relationships, they will continue to pay out in good stories.

Newsletters
The weekly school newsletter is a good place to find stories. Let’s say you found out Mrs. Johnson is retiring. A bio about the great work she’s done for the district and its impact on students would be a nice story. If your school has a canned food drive, an article highlighting results and how students felt about their success would make for good news.

Half of gathering great stories is about having great sources. The other half is being able to identify what makes a good news story.

Contributed by Megan J. Wilson, commercial freelance writer and communications consultant

Know your community, avoid controversies and pass your facility measure

Passing a school finance measure is hard work, but the steps to election success are fairly simple: establish channels of communication and build trust with your community. Trust is essential. It requires an understanding of community values that is reflected in the finance.

Why money measures fail

Money measures are successful because they respond to community priorities. They are unsuccessful for many reasons. Often, failure doesn’t have anything to do with the cost of the measure or lack of support for education.

Consultants Jeanne Magmer and Gay Campbell have worked with school districts across the nation that endured defeat and resubmitted a proposal for voter approval.

Problems usually arise with an inadequate planning process. School districts that make decisions without an adequate assessment of community sentiment are usually doomed to fail. It is equally difficult to win without community involvement in the planning process.

When there is a lack of community involvement, results don’t match community priorities. The projects become controversial and result in failure on election day.

In many communities, the main reason for failure at the ballot box is the absence of community agreement about some feature of the building or its proposed location.

Controversy #1: Historical buildings

In one community, a small but vocal group had generated support for preserving a building they felt was an integral part of community history. Members of the group and their families went to school in a building that represented an important part of their childhood. Many of the building supporters recalled favorite teachers, community gatherings and other events that made others feel as if replacing the building was tantamount to condemning a long-lost friend. The facts presented by school leaders about current educational needs held little sway against these strong emotions.

Controversy #2: Location, location, location

In other communities, the proposed location of the building causes controversy. Should the middle school be next to the high school? Should the high school be in the center of town? Should elementary students be housed near secondary students? The questions are endless.

When faced with this situation, the first thing to remember is that most of these controversies are emotionally based. People who are highly emotional about an issue look for facts to support their emotional beliefs. They are unable to hear facts that do not support their feelings. When emotions run high, the heart dominates the brain and causes the brain to reject all arguments that do not support their emotions.

How to avoid these controversies

In almost every case, these controversies could have been avoided or greatly mitigated with proper planning:

• Include enough time for community involvement. High community involvement gives people a voice and time to adjust to the reality of what needs to be done. Opponents may need time to accept the changes in the plan or they may need to learn more about facility needs for modern education.
• Be sure your committees are representative of your community. A well-represented facility committee provides advice to the administration and school board and helps the community understand the need.

Measure community sentiment scientifically

Community sentiment should be evaluated in an accurate, data-based way.

In Tacoma, Wash., the district resolved a debate about the need to preserve a school building because of its historic nature through a community survey. An extensive survey defined the extent of the sentiment, evaluated the potential for getting approval to renovate or replace the structure and explored other building options to appease those who wanted the building left intact.

This process was long and involved, but it resulted in approval of a measure to replace the school.

After a measure for a new middle school failed multiple times in Ellensburg, Wash., the district initiated a comprehensive engagement process to educate the community about the lack of adequate educational facilities for students. Some voters said the measure had failed because of the proposed location. Others said it was because the current building should be preserved.

To determine the community’s desires, the district paid for a formal survey of a random sample of its residents. The results showed which location was preferred by a majority of community members and that maintaining the current building was not a high priority for most voters.

The survey served several purposes. Along with giving guidance to the board, it told loud supporters with minority views that their continued insistence would be an attempt to impose their views on a community that did not agree with them.

In both of the cases cited above, the outcome of the election depended on accurate assessment of community sentiment, communicating well and acting in accordance with community wishes.

Contributed by Gay Campbell, communications consultant

OSBA offers an online survey service to help your district collect community and staff input necessary for strategic decision-making. OSBA staff will work with you to create customized survey questions, disseminate the survey and collect the data. Additionally, a team of communication and board services professionals can analyze survey results, provide customized recommendations and deliver a final report, as well as suggested actions after the survey. Contact OSBA Deputy Director of School Board Services Cheryl W. Ryan at (614) 540-4000 or (800) 589-OSBA to learn more about this service.

What do you say? How to shape your messages

Messaging sounds like a political — or dirty — word. If we get past the idea of shaping messages to “spin” an issue, we understand that developing messages helps ensure audiences have the same understanding of an issue and our messages are effective.

For school districts, strategic messaging is something we should adopt from the world of political campaigns. Well thought-out, consistent messages will minimize confusion and misinformation and help persuade people to act in a way that benefits students.

When to message

Political campaigns are all about persuasion. They are trying to persuade you to check a certain box on a ballot. So why don’t they just tell you how to vote and be done with it? It’s because people need a reason to take a particular action instead of another and to make a specific choice. Through messaging, campaigns give you memorable, moving reasons to vote for one candidate or issue instead of another.

For a school district, messaging should be used when you need to convince people to take a certain action. For instance, you may need to convince parents to send their kids to school more regularly or fill out forms for your transportation department. You may need to convince non-parents to volunteer in your schools or to slow down in school zones.

Those are the external messages. Your most important messages may be for your internal audiences. There are many things you need to convince district staff to act on every year.

Who should shape the messages?

If you have a communications professional on staff or on contract, by all means include them. They have the training to help you quickly and efficiently develop audience-appropriate messages. If you do not have a PR person, the people closest to the work should cooperate with the people closest to the top of the organization. The leaders know the strategic goals of the board and the community. Those closest to the work know the details for developing and delivering messages.

How to develop messages

The best way to develop your messages is to come up with a short answer to each of these questions:

• Who are we trying to persuade? Focus on groups of people, not “everybody.” Focusing on everybody is focusing on nobody. Each group will have different motivations, so you must customize messages. Messages that would convince a teenager to act would be different than messages to persuade his or her parents.
• What are we asking them to do? You need to boil your message down to a specific action or short set of actions. “Please be supportive” is too vague. That is an attitude. You want actions. What, specifically are you asking them to do? Donate money? Volunteer at a school?
• Why are they not doing it already? You have to hear from people in the group you are trying to reach. Otherwise, you will only be guessing at why they are not already doing something. There is nothing worse than a bunch of administrators presuming to know why people in various demographic groups do or don’t act a certain way. Formal surveys are the best, but they are not always feasible. Surveys can be informal, as long as they tap into the thoughts of the people you need to get action from.
• What do people in that group care about? Again, the only way to know what matters to people in a certain group is to ask some of them. Or better yet, bring one into the process. Want to know what your bus drivers care about? Ask a few or invite them to your meetings. Find someone without an intense personal agenda that would prevent him or her from representing the larger group. Ask this person to share some thoughts.
• What facts would move them to act? Again, you need to test the facts with a few representatives of that group. Are young teachers going to be moved by the real dollar impacts on their retirement income as much as veteran teachers? Who knows? You have to ask them. Would the same facts convince business people to volunteer in your schools as retirees?
• Make it snappy. Phrase your messages so they are brief, informative and memorable. What is more memorable: Sixty-five percent of families in our district have such limited resources that they qualify for free and reduced lunch, as well as other community services; or 65% of our students live in poverty? Which is more memorable: Unclaimed sick leave time upon your retirement could be credited to your accounts, leading to increased retirement benefits into perpetuity; or sick leave abuse could cost you thousands per year in retirement income?

Message delivery

Messages must be delivered multiple times in multiple ways. Expert communicators, including teachers, will tell you it takes many exposures for a message to sink in. You need to determine how you can reach each audience multiple times with your messages. What meetings and other events can you plan or attend? What websites or publications would reach them? Who are the opinion leaders in their group who will share your messages?

Stay on message. This phrase may have negative connotations in politics. To some journalists, it means giving prepackaged answers to their questions. But in the world of school districts, staying on message really means knowing the reasons that resonate with the audience and staying true to them.

It minimizes confusion and builds trust when the story is the same no matter who is telling it. The information is much more powerful when several educators give people the same set of reasons in different settings. It creates awareness in the audience that your organization is serious, professional and moving forward with a unified plan.

Messaging is not about cute or clever phrases. It is about clarity of thought leading to a concise set of talking points that are delivered with consistency and attention to the priorities of your audience.

Contributed by Jay Remy, communications director, Salem- Keizer Public Schools, Salem, Ore.