School Communications Planning Guide

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Intro to Strategic School Communications
Chapter 2: Using Today’s Digital Channels
Chapter 3: Message Planning, Creation, and Delivery
Chapter 4: Legal Aspects in School Communications
Chapter 5: Measuring Your Results

Overview

Great school communication starts with a clear plan, but getting there is not automatic. Simply polishing off last year’s plan won’t cut it. Considering budget, technology, staffing, vendor relations, privacy, and accessibility issues, it can be challenging to construct a relevant, effective plan.

The School Communications Planning Guide is a resource for engaging your school community. As communications channels expand and evolve, it’s important that your school’s communications plan keeps up: one that aligns your district with modern communication practices and school-family communication preferences. From a crisis to a lunch menu, schools need to be prepared to circulate accurate and timely content. Families need to be equipped to connect with what matters most to them.

This collection of chapters and articles includes a step-by-step approach to planning and managing your school’s digital communications. It starts with using a strategic approach to goals, includes helpful school communication resources and tools, and ends with measurable results that will help you improve family engagement.

Chapter 1: Intro to Strategic School Communications

Your Mission and School Brand

A sound communications strategy starts with a mission. One that’s clear, practical, shared, and practiced. An inspiring mission statement for your school district is central to your school communications plan. If you begin with the end in mind, your entire school community will have clarity as to what it is you’re trying to accomplish as educators.

A mission statement should reflect what your school stands for, what it values, and serve as a standard for behavior for the staff, students, and other stakeholders. Everyone at your school should be prepared and equipped to walk the walk that your mission espouses.

Likewise, your mission should be reflected in your school brand, which is much more than color schemes, fonts, and logos. Your school brand is the sum of how your district wants to be known and recognized. It’s how you want your parents, students, and staff to feel about their experience with the school. 

School leadership and frontline personnel need to embrace the importance of a professional, nurturing school culture and live up to the brand promise set forth in your mission. 

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There’s no need to reinvent the wheel when creating a district mission statement. Get some inspiration for your own from examples of school mission statements published in Education World.

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A strong mission statement helps administrators and teachers develop and align their own goals with consistent focus. It’s that overarching mantra that is visible at every turn in your communications. A clear mission statement can serve as a positive reminder to keep everyone who’s involved in educating your students on course.

When formulating or refining your district mission and brand, ask yourself if it truly reflects all the great professional educators you work alongside? It’s people, after all, who personify your district with your school brand. 

Your Communications Mission

1. Involve School Leaders

Don’t develop your mission statement in isolation from other key stakeholders. Your communications lead (or committee, if you have one) should own this assignment. In addition to district leaders, involve instructors, other school staff, parents, and even students in this fundamental step. Mission statements built as a team have a head start for ready assimilation into the school environment.

2. Keep it Academic

When crafting your mission statement, keep in mind the task at hand. Don’t get too far afield from the realistic impact your school has on its students. It’s okay to think big and be altruistic, but academic achievement, after all, should be driving the bus here.

3. Make it Accessible

Avoid jargon and eduspeak. You’re not creating this for academics with advanced degrees in learning methods, but for students, families, staff, and others who want to get a feel for the goals and culture of your school to rally behind it. Here’s a tip: If there are too many syllables, reconsider word choice.

4. Spread the Word

Don’t create a mission statement then bury it on an obscure web page. It should be communicated in classrooms, school lobbies, student handbooks, websites, online profiles, gymnasiums, auditoriums, emails, videos, and other school touch points. 

The keystone of the foundation of your communications is a well-conceived, well-articulated mission statement. Be sure that mission is shared—verbatim and in practice—with all the key audiences you’re trying to reach. Every communication tactic and message you develop should serve to connect with staff, students, parents, or the community at large. 

Engaging Your Entire School Community

Communication success is all about engagement. As with any communications endeavor, you have to first know just who it is you’re trying to reach.

While family engagement is key to school success, there are other key groups that are also essential.  Beyond parents and caregivers, school communicators must consider how to reach stakeholders by segmenting and tailoring communications tactics and messages accordingly.

Internal Audiences

Your internal audience—school board members, instructors, and non-teaching staff—are perhaps your most important group. Within this broad group there will be times when you need to address subgroups as well. As a whole, these should be the first to receive that initial volley of communications on most school matters. They’re the “foot soldiers,” after all, who can carry or drop the messages going to your other audience groups. 

Especially in terms of policy and procedural changes, an informed staff is a prerequisite to supporting communications with your other audiences, helping to execute your message delivery. Conversely, an uninformed staff can obfuscate and blur an intended message—or even resent the message if not made aware of communications to other school stakeholders.

Families

Parents and caregivers are not only a major audience group, but allies in helping spread your messaging.

Getting the word out to families is actually easier than ever today, given the multitude of digital communication channels available. With the heightened role of social media, for example, “organic” parent leadership can surface at any time. No longer just the domain of PTOs and booster groups, parent voices and leadership can emerge around the myriad issues school districts face. 

Nevertheless, engaging your district families has become an around-the-clock challenge that requires increased diligence and vigilance. Keeping parents informed on their terms through personalized communication methods can serve to build support of key district-level and school-level messaging. 

Community

The community at large—including local media—are the extended audiences that factor into your communications. Nearby businesses, elected officials, civic organizations, senior centers, churches, community groups, and citizens are often overlooked.

School districts are a community asset. They are the heart and soul that helps define neighborhoods, towns, and counties. Local governments, businesses, and other community groups are key stakeholders that need to be on your radar.

Students

Many school communications plans ironically neglect—if not totally overlook—the role students can play in delivering messaging. Be sure to factor students into your internal communications mix. They can have a major impact on reaching all your other audiences. Find some student ambassadors who can haul the load when it comes to sharing and personifying your school brand.

Students, after all, are the manifestation of your school mission. 

Don’t Leave Anyone Out

When sharing content, don’t forget anybody. Keep all your audiences in mind, and develop strategies, goals and tactics targeting each.

Reaching your entire school community in today’s digital, mobile world requires a mindset, strategic approach, and the tools to connect how and when your audiences prefer.

Setting Realistic, Achievable Goals

The communications goals you establish for your district or school will vary on strategic initiatives. Give your goals a lot of thought before setting them, make sure they align closely with overall objectives, and give them a chance to be met. 

Know your school’s strengths and weaknesses. Confirm them through stakeholder surveys. Consider your current communications with staff, parents, and students. 

The big questions to ask when setting communication goals:

• What are the barriers to improving dialogue with families? 
• Have there been misunderstandings because event information isn’t transmitted as smoothly as it could be between staff and families?
• Is time-sensitive information being conveyed quickly?
• How can you better engage staff, parents, and students at your school? 
• What makes parents decide to enroll their children in your school? 
• Are there any disconnects you need to eliminate? 
• Are you reaching prospective students effectively?

Perhaps your communication with staff is excellent, but there have been issues with enrollment. Maybe you’re finding it challenging to connect with families regularly. Identify the main target groups that you need to communicate with more effectively and set your goals accordingly.

Achievable goals to consider:

• Increase opportunities to share good news about staff, students, and school-related issues with the entire school community
• Increase the amount of content sent to families with regular information on important district-level, school-level, and classroom-level information
• Better gauge and be more responsive to the communications needs of school community stakeholders
• Measure family engagement with metrics made available using digital channels

Suggestions for goal-setting and other fundamental steps to creating a strategic school communications plan can be found on The National School Public Relations Association (NSPRA) website here: sample outline of a strategic communications plan.

How to Set School Communication Goals

Setting communications goals for your school is easier than you might think. Here are some great examples of strategic goals sure to improve family engagement:

1. Redesign school website
2. Create a speakers’ bureau
3. Increase social media following
4. Add or enhance communications channels                  
5. Create a superintendent’s blog
6. Create a district YouTube channel
7. Expand social media
8. Establish a social media internship
9. Recount popular retired teachers and staff
10. Develop school mobile app
11. Enhance uniformity of classroom (teacher) websites
12.  Increase social media content (more postings)
13.  Better integrate social media onto website
14.  Survey stakeholder groups
15.  Increase messaging around key programs
16.  Better depict the fun, human interest side of your school
17.  Spotlight teachers and non-teaching staff
18.  Better utilize intranet for in-service and professional development
19.  Develop social media ambassadors
20.  Create a school style guide for staff emails
21.  Launch a school Instagram account
22.  Form a communications advisory committee
23.  Highlight successful alumni
24.  Spread school board news
25.  Appoint web accessibility coordinator

Chapter 2: Using Today’s Digital Channels

One of the overarching goals of school communications planning is staying current on all the modern channels available. Independently, each is quite effective, but when used together, all these digital channels can significantly boost your engagement levels. A responsive school communications plan integrates these essential channels with non-digital tactics for a modernly comprehensive approach to the ever-changing challenges of engaging your school community.

Balancing the Communications Mix

Pursuing digital channels cannot come at the expense of proven non-digital tools schools have long employed. Personal small- and large-group meetings, phone calls, school signage, take-home packets, and the sundry tools otherwise used to connect are still in play. But an integrated approach merging progressive technologies with “old-school” tactics is your best formula for success.

There are many channels your district needs to embrace: powerful websites that are easy to navigate, social media that connect us from anywhere, and notification systems that automatically trigger voice, text, and emails. Working together, they can form the communications arsenal for your school. Understanding and using these channels will make the job of connecting with and engaging all your audiences more effective.

District and School Websites

A website serves an important purpose for districts and its schools. Think of it as a self-service portal for a great deal of information for your school community.

Because schools have distinct requirements in terms of what their websites need to provide, good website design must take into account precisely why and how visitors access your site. Foremost, frequently accessed information must be easy to find. Your websites should also reflect a professional image that helps depict your school brand.

Website accessibility is critical from both an ADA-compliance standpoint and for the larger population that’s accessing your web content. Web content needs to be free of barriers for people with disabilities. Likewise, your web content is usually shared across multiple channels on multiple mobile devices, so everyone needs to access your content anytime from anywhere.

In addition, a district site is the hub for alerts, calendars and news, submission forms, social media feeds, school board activity, e-commerce, and more.

Notifications and Alerts

Critical updates, emergency information and important reminders delivered through SMS (text) and voice messages are increasingly important for communications. These types of systems may or may not integrate with other channels such as mobile apps, so careful consideration needs to be given to capabilities and limitations of notification solutions serving K12.

As we all grow more dependent on receiving alerts and notifications to help us prioritize the news and information we want to receive, family preferences and the ability to personalize their school communications are a driving force for successful family engagement. Parents and caregivers should have the ability to customize their preferences and receive the preferred method(s) of communication.

Schools need to be sensitive to families’ preferences for these messages to avoid a breakdown in communication. Emphasize careful user setup and preferences selection when your users consider the kinds of content they want pushed to them. This article goes into more detail about why school notifications should be in your communications mix.

Mobile App

With 90 percent of users accessing the internet via mobile devices, it’s no surprise that mobile apps are becoming a very popular method for school communications. A mobile app can be efficient for families and others in your school community who prefer to use apps.

A dedicated, branded school mobile app can serve as a handy conduit to your school website, where users can access common information like alerts, calendars, directories, news, and lunch menus. Another key benefit of the mobile app is the ability to deliver push notifications. While the mobile app shouldn’t replace the website, the website content needs to be accessible through the app. One drawback of mobile apps is the need to have users update their apps, which creates a potential barrier to full utilization of this channel.

There are many key features a school mobile app should have, but one of the most important is the ability to segment your notifications to specific users. For example, if the middle school football game is canceled, you shouldn’t be notifying the elementary and high school parents. 

Social Media

Popular social media channels are driving how many businesses and organizations engage their audiences. They’re also how many in your school community get their news, entertainment, and other information. Social media needs to be a big part of your communications mix as well.

Understanding which social media platforms to use and when to use them requires understanding the limits and life cycles of the content posted to each channel. Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram are the key channels we suggest. These are what your school should be using to reach the increasingly digital and mobile stakeholders your school serves. Twitter, less so. Tik-Tok, we would stay away from.

The beauty of social media is how easily the content can be both linked to other social media channels and shared with many people. Regardless of which media you’re utilizing, building a following and encouraging sharing is what it’s all about.

For a solid drill down on making the most of the content side of social media at your school, you should also check in with Andrea Gribble at SocialSchool4Edu, school social media storyteller extraordinaire.

Email

The email channel remains a key channel for schools because it is great for 1-on-1 communication. Everyone has an email account these days, so this channel is almost universally used for regular correspondence. Email allows schools to provide information of all kinds—in detail if needed. Email can be personal and, if done right, features a high open rate, because most families open emails from their child’s school. 

The use of email can range from reminders, policies, registration, newsletters, and a variety of announcements. Email also can be the messenger for your website content—still the hub of your school information. Most third-party email blasting systems (e.g., MailChimp, Constant Contact, etc.), which provide a higher degree of email security than one which a school handles itself, enable important metrics that can help you improve your communication.

Email, however, can often be less effective if not written and managed properly. Most, for example, are way too long, reducing the chances the reader will read the whole thing, much less act upon it if a call-to-action is included. But, while there’s more to effective emailing than meets the eye, resources like Smore Newsletters offer easy to use templates that you can customize for your schools and district! They also include analytics to see who is engaging.

Video

Video is a crowd-pleasing way for schools to capture, chronicle, and archive great school content. When it comes to communicating highlights from just about any kind of event, graduation, a board meeting, ball game, something humorous, touching or otherwise entertaining, video rules.

Videos can greatly amplify your communications. They help personify your school district by bringing messages to life. They’re really quite easy to produce and post. Even live-streaming video for schools is easier than you might think.

Videos and the favored channels to share them—YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo—are the most popular of media channels because they’re so easy to just sit back and watch. With the abundance of content shoved in our faces each day, short-form video is a natural way to elevate above the clutter and engage your school community. 

Add to our natural inclination to gravitate to audiovisual media, web, and videoconferencing are now as much a part of school-home engagement as the old tattered take-home packet once was. School engagement officers, public relations, communications, boards and school leaders need to up their video game. 

Pro tips: Share your school stories with video

School video storyteller Jake Sturgis, a champion video storyteller and APR professional says be sure to showcase your videos on social media too. Some schools show live streaming events using Facebook Live or their own YouTube channels, posting everything from football highlights, to school productions, to superintendent’s messages.

Chapter 3: Message Planning, Creation, and Delivery

Every school abounds with communications content possibilities. Schools are a veritable treasure trove of stories and events that deserve to be shared. The real challenge is finding the time and other resources to create and deliver all the messages and stories, then choosing the right channels for where and when to share it all.

Organizing Your Content

The size of your district, communications staffing levels, school leadership, culture, vendors and technology levels are variables that you may have limited control over. But, how you organize and assemble your content is up to you. When managing your content, be sure to cover the following bases.

The Content Hubs

At the highest level, there are four major content hubs that you should include in your communications plan, each one requiring its own set of objectives and specific goals:

1. Family engagement

Job number one for schools: a steady stream of targeted school information and news to better connect with parents and caregivers. Messages can range from time-sensitive alerts and updates to warm-and-fuzzy social media posts. Engagement needs to be at the district level, school level, classroom level.

2. Crisis communications

Fail-safe preparedness and response for emergencies, lockdowns, staff scandals. Maybe there are major “issues” that are current or on the horizon that require strategic communications or outside counsel. Ask yourself if you are prepared. Do you have contingency planning in place?

3. Internal communications

Your students, instructors, and non-teaching staff are perhaps your most important audience as they can influence everyone else you’re trying to reach. They help you live up to the school mission. Are you engaging these groups with the same urgency you apply to families and the external school community?

4. Community relations

Being accessible to the communities in which your district operates is another big obligation and should be a priority. Local media, businesses, and social groups can be big advocates of your students, staff, and mission. It’s up to you how you connect the dots between your district and the community.

School-Home Messaging Essentials

What we know about messages:

• Many messages are recurring from school year to school year, or month to month (calendar events)
• Some messages (e.g., school newsletter) use templates, many others start from scratch
• Messages need to be easily created and sent across multiple channels to select lists

Message types:

The urgency of each school message varies but can be classified most generally in three categories:

URGENT – Alerts (lockdowns, school closings, crisis/emergencies)
IMPORTANT – Schedule updates, important deadlines, superintendent’s/principal’s messages
INFORMATIVE – Stories and happenings, events, featured extracurriculars, and people news (staff and students)

Building a Message Content Team

One of the most common mistakes made by school communicators is trying to do it all alone. While it is certainly important to maintain control of messaging—especially at the district level—it’s neither necessary nor advisable for one person to take on responsibility for every web page, notification, and social media post.

Much of a school district’s communication consists of repetitive, calendar-based content that is regularly published, posted, and sent out. This routine messaging can be managed without a dedicated team. However, when it comes to creating school-specific or classroom-level content, a team approach becomes beneficial.

District communications directors should surround themselves with designated communications “field reporters” as such. They can be responsible for gathering content at each school and serve as the eyes and ears of the vast “field” of building-level communications opportunities. These team members can be principals, admins, teachers, or any staff who is a champion for school communications. Some schools even create communications “ambassador programs” which can include students and parents.

Communication team members can be given the necessary permissions to publish content on essential channels. Each member will be responsible for managing specific content areas. You can monitor their activities and, if desired, preview messages before they go live.

Have a plan in place to handle negative social media comments. They will arise, and there are definite dos and don’ts when it comes to dealing with negative comments from the public.

The Power of School Storytelling

Nothing better defines your school, its culture, and its image across your entire school community than the positive stories about staff and students. Share those stories of achievement, milestones, behind-the-scenes glimpses into the ordinary and extraordinary that happens every day.

Warm and fuzzy moments can be captured with a photo and caption or a short video that’s posted to social media or internal school feeds. These vignettes show an authentic side of your school that’s every bit as important as the routine general messages and updates you create.

Great stories, after all, are what shape perceptions about your school, so be sure to keep your storytelling funnels full. 

Tips for Gathering Stories

Make it easy on yourself and your contributors by using technology to solicit ideas:

• Create a dedicated email address for such requests ([email protected] for example)
• Create a submission form on your website for soliciting content
• Routinely ask for news and story ideas through your school’s social media channels

Chapter 4: Legal Aspects in School Communications

Schools face growing challenges in protecting information and complying with expanding regulations for secure and legal communication. Several laws are crucial for schools to consider when planning their communications. This chapter outlines the most important ones.

FERPA – Family Education Rights and Privacy Act

Under FERPA, families have the right to request and receive their child’s education records, and they have the right to submit those requests via email or an online submission form. Your school should have the systems in place so that families can easily make those requests and be responded to in a timely manner. Consider creating a dedicated email address for such requests or, better yet, creating a specific submission form on your website.

Check out the government’s FERPA FAQ page that answers questions you or families might have.

ADA – The Americans with Disabilities Act

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) applies to your school’s website, not just physical accommodations like ramps and parking spaces. Your website serves as your school’s online presence, so it must be accessible to all community members, including those with disabilities.

Key considerations for web accessibility include:

1. Screen reader compatibility: Design your site to be easily navigable by screen readers, which are used by people with visual impairments.
2. Clear structure: Use distinct headings and a logical text structure to help screen readers announce breaks in the text.
3. Navigation options: Provide ways for users to skip over repetitive content like navigation menus.

Ensure your website complies with ADA and Section 508 standards to protect and include students with disabilities in your online communications.

TCPA – Telephone Consumer Protection Act

Designed originally, in part, to protect us all from those pesky telemarketers and such, the TCPA was expanded by the Federal Communications Commission to regulate automated voice and text messages many schools are using. 

Pay special attention if you have, or are considering implementing, a notification system at your school. The key here is consent. If your school uses a notification system, you should require all recipients who subscribe to the notification service to provide consent. Otherwise, your school is legally exposed to potential fines for contacting subscribers without their consent. Especially since more and more schools are using notification systems for much more than emergencies (when health or safety issues are not in play), be safe, and be certain to gain permission from all your users.

COPPA – Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act

This federal regulation is another safeguard for children and their families. It prohibits any kind of unfair or deceptive methods when it comes to collecting, using, or disclosing any personal information about children on the internet. COPPA addresses primarily websites, apps, games, and other online services that children may interact with. Any and all sites must obtain verifiable consent from a parent or guardian before they collect personal information from a child.

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PRO TIP:

If a student or staff member’s image might show up on your website or in a social media post, make sure you have their permission.

When it comes to using images, protect your school and your students by making sure your school’s Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) and consent forms are readily available on your website. They can even be integrated into the school registration form.

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PPRA – Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment

Under the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment regulation, schools must get consent from parents or caregivers before asking children about specific personal information. One way to do this is to have an email system that can quickly send consent forms to families. Once consent is given, the email software can record the answer and you can then move forward with any survey or questionnaire.

Leave it to the Lawyers

While compliance with these laws is best left to your district’s legal counsel, it’s imperative that any school communicator—and most administrators—be aware of these laws.

Pro Tip: Post your policies

Carve out a page on your school district website—preferably in the footer that shows up on all your district and school sites—that informs your school community of your compliance when it comes to pupil and family privacy and accessibility.

Chapter 5: Measuring Your Results

Ongoing evaluation is crucial for keeping your communication strategies responsive and agile. Many contemporary communication channels offer built-in analytics to help you understand what’s working and what isn’t.

This chapter introduces popular measurement tools to assess the effectiveness of your communications.

Surveys

Surveys are a wealth of performance data you can use to measure your communications. Family and staff surveys especially are great ways to start and maintain dialogue on communications issues. Your website and social media channels provide built-in opportunities to survey your audiences. Many CMS providers make it easy to create a form or survey that can help spark or confirm communications initiatives. 

Google Analytics

Because your district and school websites are the hub of information for your school community, knowing how people use them helps you plan, design, and build successful websites. One of the best ways to get good data on how people are accessing your website is to use Google Analytics. It’s free to schools and is relatively easy to set up on your website. Start collecting valuable data, like:

• What are your popular pages?
• What are visitors searching for when they come to your site?
• How do users interact with your pages?

Google Analytics includes a variety of charts to clearly display information you want to see. 

Email Tracking

Measuring your email activity can improve your communication effectiveness. Key metrics to track include:

1. Open rates: How many recipients open your emails
2. Bounce rates: How many emails fail to deliver
3. Click-through rates: Which links recipients click on

These metrics can help you increase engagement with your audience.

Many third-party email services, such as Google Workspace for Education and Constant Contact, offer built-in analytics tools. These make it easy to manage and measure the performance of your school’s email campaigns.

Text/Voice Metrics

Notifications are time-sensitive and often critical, so when you send huge volumes of messages through voice and text channels, you need assurances that they’re getting through. Most school notification systems provide real-time reporting from a dashboard that enables you to set up reports by broadcast types.

Social media channels offer the advantage of providing immediate feedback on audience interaction and content sharing. For school communities, Facebook and Instagram remain the most effective platforms for engagement. School social media expert Andrea Gribble recommends focusing on these networks.

When measuring your social media performance, consider tracking:

1. Follower growth
2. Impressions (how many times your content is displayed)
3. Number of shares

Popular social networks provide built-in analytics tools that offer more metrics than most school communicators need. For more comprehensive analysis and management of your social media content, consider third-party tools such as Hootsuite and Sprout Social.

Pro Tip: Measure, adjust, measure 

Evaluating the effectiveness of your school communications should be an ongoing process, not a one-time event. If you’re new to this:

1. Start by benchmarking your current performance. This establishes a baseline for where you are now.
2. Set clear goals for where you want to be in the future.
3. Implement regular measurement and evaluation practices.

Even with limited time and resources, consistent assessment allows you to be flexible in both your communication methods and messaging. This approach helps you adapt and improve your strategies over time.