Education Week - August 22, 2012 - 7

EDUCATION WEEK AUGUST 22, 2012 www.edweek.org
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As Competition Grows,
Districts Make Pitches
To Boost Enrollment
Educators turn to billboards, direct mail,
and retooled programs to attract students
By Christina A. Samuels
Public school enrollment in
Grand Rapids, Mich., has dropped
slowly during the past five years,
from about 21,000 students to
18,500 today.
Parents have left the west
Michigan city for better jobs
elsewhere, as have many
throughout the state. Or,
they’ve stayed in the area
but departed the district for
independently run charter
schools or other enticing
“schools of choice,” which, in
Michigan, are schools run
by traditional school districts
that are able to recruit
students from a wide geographic
area.
In response, the school
district and the city have
teamed up for a campaign
they call “We Are GR,” intended
to excite residents
about the community and
about the offerings of the
regular public schools. The
push, which involves billboards,
direct mailings, ads
on buses, neighborhood doorknocking
campaigns, and
Web videos, will culminate
in a back-to-school event at
the city’s zoo this week.
Focused Efforts
John Helmholdt, the communications
director for the
district, likens it to a political
campaign.
“There’s a reason during elections
that you get inundated,” he said.
“You’ve got to beat a message into
a voter’s head seven times before it
sinks in.”
Across the country, students
returning to the classroom this
fall, as well as their parents, are
increasingly likely to have been
the focus of intensive marketing
campaigns like this one. Charter
schools, voucher programs, private
schools, and state laws that allow
parents to enroll their students in
schools outside their normal attendance
boundaries have all had
an impact on districts. And, as students
leave a school system or a
school, state money often goes with
them.
The enrollment drain has been
particularly pronounced in urban
districts, which have the highest
concentration of charter options
for students. According to the
Washington-based National Alliance
for Public Charter Schools,
the number of students enrolled in
charter schools, which are publicly
funded but largely independent institutions,
rose from about 580,000
in 2001-02 to more than 2 million
in 2011-12. That represents about
FROM TOP: Teresa Weatherall
Neal, far right, the
superintendent of Grand
Rapids, Mich., schools, and
other administrators talk
with children during
a recruitment campaign for
a local elementary school.
Grand Rapids educators
are going door to door in
an effort to boost sagging
enrollment in the city’s
schools.
A billboard touting the
district’s achievements
is seen in the same
section of the city.
tions Association in Rockville, Md.
“We have principals coming to us
and saying we have a great school
here, but everybody seems to be
leaning towards what’s new.”
In Grand Rapids, the district
also plans to spend this school
year figuring out what other
changes it may need to make to
hold on to its students, said Teresa
Weatherall Neal, who was
named the superintendent in
January. While no plans have
been made yet, she said some of
the changes coming for 2013-14
The state had close to 135,000
students enrolled in 526 charter
schools in the 2011-12 school year,
according to the national charter
school alliance.
Reaping Results
Currently, the district focuses on
direct mailings, promotional efforts
on public-television stations during
children’s shows, and social-media
outlets. In all, it spends about
$100,000 a year on advertising and
marketing, he said.
is located in a community with a
shrinking population, devoted $1
million to marketing efforts in the
2011-12 school year, said Patrick
Wallace, the spokesman for the
district.
Hammered by bad publicity and
a party to a desegregation agreement
that allows students to leave
for surrounding jurisdictions, the
district has seen its enrollment
dwindle from about 45,000 five
years ago to a projected 23,000 for
2012-13. The loss has meant a budget
reduction of $50 million for the
4.2 percent of the public school
population.
The push to market traditional
districts and regular schools “is
stronger than it’s been before,” said
Rich Bagin, the executive director
of the National School Public Rela-
will certainly involve closing some
schools, some of which are operating
at only 60 percent capacity,
and bringing in new programs.
“We really need to reinvent the
school district in the next school
year,” Ms. Neal said.
For other districts, promoting
their offerings has been a long-running
practice.
Terry Locke, the spokesman for
the 40,000-student Chandler Unified
district in Arizona, said that 10
years ago, the district used movie
theaters as a venue to run advertisements
touting the benefits of
the school system. Arizona is the
“parent-choice capital of the country,”
Mr. Locke said, and Maricopa
County, where Chandler is located,
has 20 charter schools within its
boundaries.
At the same time, Mr. Locke said,
the district has tried to draw in
parents with popular programs,
such as “traditional academies”
that focus on highly structured instruction;
an accelerated program
for middle school students based
at a high school; a new academy
for gifted students based at an elementary
school; and a junior high
school with a single-gender option
for some classes.
The marketing efforts appear to
have had some impact: Last school
year, the district had about 10,000
students who did not attend their
neighborhood schools. Of those,
about 4,000 students came from
outside the district, Mr. Locke said.
In Missouri, the St. Louis school
system, which has been unaccredited
by the state since 2007 and
7
district, Mr. Wallace said.
It will be hard to judge the effects
of the St. Louis advertising this
school year because of a confounding
event: The state education department
closed six charter schools
that operated within the city, all
for academic failure. At least a portion
of the 3,300 students affected
by the closings have enrolled in
regular St. Louis schools, boosting
enrollment and reversing years of
decline for reasons unrelated to any
district marketing effort, Mr. Wallace
said.
Preschool Hook
St. Louis can point to one espe-
cially bright spot, however, in its
promotional efforts: a concerted
push by the school system to expand
all-day-preschool
seats in 2011-12. Sheryl
Davenport, the executive
director for early childhood
and early-childhood special
education in St. Louis, said
the district had about 1,600
seats for 3- and 4-year-olds
in late 2010, with about 800
more students on a waiting
list for general preschool and
500 waiting for a spot in a
magnet preschool program.
The district pushed to
add about 700 seats. The
advertising around that effort
lured parents who were
looking for all-day, academic
oriented preschool options
for their children, including
free transportation for
4-year-olds and free beforeand-after
care.
“For a lot of our families,
this was their first experience
with St. Louis public
schools,” Ms. Davenport
said. The district also tried
to make the enrollment process
efficient for parents, by
signing up pupils at a central
location and giving parents
acceptance letters on
the spot to take back to their
neighborhood preschools.
Ms. Davenport said that a survey
of parents whose children would
be enrolling in kindergarten this
school year indicated that the vast
majority of them planned to remain
with St. Louis schools.
While many districts position
themselves in competition with
other school options in their communities,
Denver’s marketing efforts
include its charter school
options. All those schools are advertised
together in mailings to
parents, said Marissa Ferrari,
the director of marketing for the
81,000-student school system.
In the last school year, Denver
also introduced a streamlined enrollment
system that allows parents
to submit one form for the district’s
regular public schools, charter
schools, and magnet offerings.
“We view all of our schools as a
portfolio of quality options, so we
do think that it is our duty to promote
them equitably,” said Alyssa
Whitehead-Bust, the district’s chief
of innovation and reform. Though
state aid follows students if they
choose to attend a charter school,
the Denver district is measured
on test scores of students no matter
what type of school they attend,
Ms. Whitehead-Bust said.
Photos by Brian Widdis for Education Week
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Education Week - August 22, 2012

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