Get excited for the 2023 annual PenSPRA Symposium! Network and connect with fellow communication professionals on Monday, April 24 and Tuesday, April 25 during break-out sessions, hands-on activities, keynote presentations and more!

Conference experiences will include:

• All Meals Provided
• Keynote Speaker Katie Angstadt, Partner at CRA | Admired Leadership
• Hands-On Activities
• PenSPRA 2022 Communications Contest Award Ceremony
• Sponsor Exhibits
• Networking Opportunities

To learn more about the event and about our keynote speaker, Katie Angstadt, visit the PenSPRA Symposium webpage.

Register today!

Connor Gleason, finalsite.com

School communicators are often faced with pessimistic news and find themselves reacting to unfavorable stories and negative press. All too often the news of the day is focused on student misconduct, union conflicts, budget cuts, bullying incidents, personnel conflicts, or a frustrated stakeholder who voices their concerns to the media or across social media.

These negative stories seem to cling to the local news cycle for far longer than we'd like, affecting your school brand, and stretching the communications resources of every school district, large and small.

And whether it's negative social posts or negative reviews, school communicators need to be prepared to respond to negative comments and bad press while staying strategically focused on a positive storytelling program.

Here are five tips that are essential for handling negative news about your school and developing a successful brand storytelling program.

To continue reading, click here.

celpr.com

For a growing number of Americans, English is not their primary language. Additionally, more than five million households are limited in English proficiency, increasing the need for multilingual communications that better serve these communities.

We sat down with Richfield Public Schools’ Jennifer Valley, Director of Marketing and Communications, and Rosa Rubio, Translation and Engagement Coordinator, to learn more about how they’ve successfully provided communications in languages that serve their communities.

To continue reading, click here.

Jennifer Shealy, Director of Communications,
Downingtown Area School District, jshealy@dasd.org

Most of us are well aware of the nationwide bus driver shortage stemming from the pandemic. In my home district, this school year brought a 40-bus deficit, resulting in delayed buses, last-minute changes and a whole lot of stress on staff, parents and students.

Downingtown uses three primary bus contractors to transport students, which puts us in a bit of a gray area regarding marketing for them. On one hand, we should not use district resources to promote a contractor, but on the other, the lack of drivers directly impacts our students.

We have handled the situation in a few ways:

1. We created a bus driver appreciation campaign. We collected gift card donations from local restaurants and once a month on a Friday, we pull a driver’s name to receive the gift card. The driver has to be working that day in order to receive the gift card, which has helped to decrease the Friday “early weekend” call-outs. We also plan to institute a “driver of the month” program where our superintendent delivers an in-person, surprise thank you with balloons and goodies for our all-star driver of the month. The driver will also be featured on our social media channels with links to the contractor employment pages.
2. Get students and Home and School organizations involved. A group of our high school students created thank you baskets and hand-delivered them to bus drivers. They included snacks and gift cards to Wawa. The drivers loved them and appreciated the personal touch.
3. Whenever we host a job fair or large-scale community event, we offer a free table to our bus contractors.
4. On every “your bus will be running late” communication, we include a request for drivers with links to the contractor employment sites.
5. We are in negotiations with our bus contractors for our district to provide additional funds to provide a small raise for any driver willing to be a substitute driver. This should help minimize the impact on our students of last-minute driver absences.

Andrea Gribble, socialschool4edu.com

We’ve said it before: In the land of social media, content is king, but engagement is queen! People then ask, “But how do I get my community to engage?” One strategy is to ask questions!

Delaina McCormack, Manager of Social Media at Fairfax County Public Schools, is a member of our #SocialSchool4EDU membership program. She has mastered the art of fostering engagement by asking relevant, targeted questions on Facebook. She shared her list with us inside our membership group, and now we’re sharing it with you!

To continue reading, click here.

celpr.com

A readability score is a number telling how easy it will be for someone to read a particular text. The most frequent scoring is the Flesch reading ease test, which measures the readability of a text. It uses two variables to determine the readability score:

• the average length of your sentences (measured by the number of words)
• the average number of syllables per word

It provides a score between 0 and 100. A score of 100 means your copy is easy to read. A score of 0 means your text is challenging to read. You can see the exact interpretation of all the scores in the table below.

Many tools help you assess your readability and change your scoring. For example, using the Flesch reading-ease test, Grammarly’s readability score is based on the average length of sentences and the number of words in your document.

To continue reading, click here.

Kristen Doverspike, finalsite.com

Each year brings new strategies to succeed in our ever-changing digital world. And with the major shifts we’ve seen in recent years, do school professionals even dare predict what they’re up against in 2023?

Here’s the good news — for all of the whiplash we may have felt trying to keep up, you can’t deny that communications have seen a positive turn. We’ve invested more time in creating thoughtful content. We’ve educated ourselves. We’ve become less video-shy. 

And more and more, we’ve seen the value in coming together as a community. 

We’ll always find ourselves rising to new challenges, especially as online expectations keep climbing higher and higher. So, rather than waiting to see what happens, let’s get ahead. 

Here are the major trends that we here at Finalsite predict will influence your school communications strategies in 2023

To continue reading, click here. 

The Symposium Committee is seeking current Pennsylvania school public relations professionals to present at the annual PenSPRA Symposium! 

Presentations should be relevant and beneficial to communication professionals at various levels within the field. The Committee asks that presentations provide a level of interaction and are either 60 minutes total (45 minutes of presenting and 15 minutes of Q&A) or 30 minutes total (20 minutes of presenting and 10 minutes of Q&A). The presentation method and specific topic are determined by the presenter(s). The deadline to submit your proposal is January 15, 2023. 

To submit your proposal, click here.

Written by: Susan S. Phy, School/Community Relations at
Bensalem Township School District, sphy@bensalemsd.org

Bensalem, PA - Congratulations to Bensalem High School (BHS) junior, Keira Seidman, for being named a Pennsylvania Association for Gifted Education's (PAGE) Distinguished High School Student of the Year for 2022! Keira was recognized at the award ceremony and luncheon at the annual PAGE conference on October 17 at the Kalahari Poconos Resort.

Additionally, Keira was an honoree at the YWCA Bucks County 30th Annual Salute to Women Who Make a Difference Gala. She represented the teen award for “#GirlPower,” while 13 women were honored for Advocacy & Civic Engagement, Corporate & Social Responsibility, Media & Journalism, Women’s Empowerment, Racial & Social Justice, and Community Engagement. 

Keira is a member of the BHS Robotics Team, National Honor Society, Varsity Softball, Mathletes, Chess Club, and Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Science. Out of school, she participates in the Bensalem Police Athletic League co-ed Street Hockey and Club Softball. She also has her own business with her sister called STEAMcraft, where they make DIY STEM kits for kids. Additionally, Keira has spent more than 200 hours volunteering in the community at Silver Lake Nature Center summer camp, Bucks County Girls Softball League clinics, and BTSD’s middle and elementary school robotics programs. She was named United States Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick’s Hometown Hero of the Week and accepted into the “Exelon Foundation STEM Leadership Academy” summer program at Drexel.  

Keira plans to attend college and major in mechanical or chemical engineering.

Share Your News with Us!

Do you have any press releases about your school district or intermediate unit that you would like us to include in the next PenSPRA Newsletter? Send your stories, job postings and tips to Marta Howard at martah@cciu.org to see them in the PenSPRA newsletter!

Jill Johnson, classintercom.com

Does giving students the usernames and passwords to your school social media accounts sound like a good idea? Probably not. Conversely, giving students the opportunity to create content for your school’s social media accounts is a great idea if you have a plan to moderate their content in a secure and systematic way.

We talk about digital citizenship a lot. We reference the T-H-I-N-K graphic. We complain about the negative influence of social media–think Tide Pods, tea rooms, devious licks–on our students a lot. But how often do we offer the opportunity for students to participate in social media on behalf of their school? How often do we give them an authentic audience and allow them to “get a reaction” rooted in positivity?

By giving students the opportunity to practice digital citizenship skills and receive feedback in order to learn and grow, we empower students to tell their story. Does this sound like a daunting task? It’s easier than you might think! Follow these four steps: Recruit, Train, Retain and Sustain to build your team and Inspire your students to take ownership of telling their school’s story.

To continue reading, click here.