This speech was delivered in a session of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees/Massachussetts Association of School Superintendents 2007 Joint Annual Conference held in Hyannis, MA on November 15, 2007.

Good morning!
I am so happy to be here to talk about public education. It’s something I’m passionate about and want to see succeed. In the next fifteen minutes I’m going to share with you my ideas about how marketing and communications can help you to fulfill your educational mission and make you a more effective administrator and leader.

For the past ten years I have helped to bring some of the perspectives of my private sector marketing experience to the non-profit and public sectors. This application of business concepts to non-profit organizations is a trend that is proving to be an effective catalyst for these groups to fulfill their missions. Public schools may be the final frontier. This is the focus of my professional work and what I want to share with you today.

The Issue
Many of you may feel that marketing and education are incompatible. Many of you are convinced that students are your only or primary constituency. It’s true that students are the primary consumer of your services, but if you are only focusing your efforts on teaching and learning then you are doing them a disservice.

Schools actually have several constituencies. Educators often talk about the correlation between parental involvement and student performance. Parents are important as models, cheerleaders and as advocates for the education system. In marketing terms, they are the purchase decision maker, sometimes choosing to send their child to another school instead of to yours. So communicating effectively to them is essential to getting them involved on all these dimensions.

Furthermore, the labor-intensive nature of your operation requires that you have the full collaboration of your employees. Faculty, staff and school volunteers are not only service providers, they are your most effective ambassadors. By paying attention to and communicating to each of these groups, you will improve your relationships with every other constituency.

But today I will focus only on a group that schools don’t usually communicate with, even though they hold the power to make or break your best laid plans. For to best serve your students you also need to look outside the four walls of your district to the community that provides you with your mandate and the funding that allows you to do the important work you do.

In towns throughout Massachusetts, we have seen repeated override rejections resulting in diminished resources for rising education costs. The League of Women Voters cites these examples: Swampscott - closing a school to close a budget gap; Northbridge- parents borrowing money to restore programs and teachers; Newburyport, Saugus, Haverhill and Gloucester - just a few of the towns who are laying off teachers. Just recently, reports that Randolph ended bus service, after already having cut as many teachers as they could.

The common complaint is that people can’t afford to pay the increased taxes. But then why is Starbucks able to sell a $5 cup of coffee when it costs pennies to make a cup at home? Why are SUVs so popular when there are so many fuel efficient options? What makes one town approve tax increases, which may amount to only an extra dollar a week, while another rejects them? The truth is that people afford what they want.

Taxpayers are consumers who are constantly making economic choices. Do they want good schools? They must choose between money for schools, or the other things they need and want in life: food, shelter, clothing, vacations. Who is influencing these decisions? In almost every case, there is a marketing or communications plan in effect to sway that person’s choice. Are you helping them make financial choices that will result in support for your district?

To the public servant whose salary and budget are derived from tax revenues, Proposition 2 ½ seems like a bane. But from the consumers’ point of view, Proposition 2 ½ and its override clause are an opportunity to consider the value of proposed tax increases. This means that local officials have the responsibility to convince voters that the taxes they pay are an expenditure that is worth their support. This responsibility is, at its core, a marketing and communications task; taxes are the price of community services; and a yes vote is an affirmative purchase decision.

For many educators, the idea of selling your schools may feel uncomfortable, or a distraction from the demands of running a school. But when the 70-80% of taxpayers who don’t have children in the schools and don’t think they have anything to do with you, how are you going to make them want to choose to spend more on taxes for schools? If you think of your district like a business, you may come to realize that you cannot take taxpayers for granted. They alone have the power to choose to fund your mission; they need to be convinced that the products you are selling, namely education and the community benefits that schools provide, are worth their support.

It’s not just about marketing. From a governance perspective, as the town’s elected body, school boards have a fiscal and political responsibility to communicate. School boards must not only understand, evaluate and support the school budget, they must convince voters to support these finance measures. Likewise, school boards should ensure accountability from the administration and then communicate to the public about their district’s performance. Together with school administrators, as the leadership team seeking financial resources, your marketing and communications objective is to convince taxpayers that your schools are utilizing tax moneys wisely and are a vital asset to the community, not a liability. Getting them to want to spend their limited resources on your operating budget, let alone any bond measures, is not a last minute get-out-the vote effort, although we shouldn’t forget to do that, too. Getting them to spend money on education requires a marketing and communications strategic plan that is on-going, and which will take time to build effectiveness. When the community wants to support this asset, they will vote to pay for it.

To be even more explicit from a marketing perspective, schools are the most brandable product or service a town offers. They are the most identifiable asset to and product of the community they serve. Citizens need public schools, not only to maintain the value of their homes, but also to create a healthy active community and to feed our democratic form of government and our market economy. This affects home buying decisions, business location decisions, and local and regional economic health. So, while this may seem crass and may feel uncomfortable for you as educators, the fundamental goal is to convince your community to choose to spend on its school brand rather than on that extra weekly cup of coffee.

What are some basic messages?
So how many of you are already thinking this way? If you’re not, you may wonder if it really matters. If your school district does not have the full support of your community at Town Meeting or the ballot, there are likely two reasons why. Many taxpayers don’t vote because they don’t think their vote will matter. But most importantly, since action requires an understanding of the issues, many don’t vote because they don’t understand the issues. So what can be done?

The first concept about communications to absorb is that it is a two-way street. Listening to your constituency and understanding their perspective is essential to knowing how to respond to their concerns. This will develop mutual respect for each other’s perspectives, trust that there is transparency in the process and a deeper understanding of the issues. This understanding will lead to action.

Like an onion, there are many layers to understanding. Each can be addressed with a communications strategy. The first layer has to do with how citizens feel about their personal fiscal health and taxation in general. So many people today feel financially insecure and are so fed up with taxes that when they are given an opportunity to vote on them, as they do with local taxes, they vote no. Maintaining a positive and constructive relationship with other town leaders is essential here, especially if voters vote on a total budget package. Some communities offer tax breaks for citizens of certain age or income. All citizens need to remember or understand what services local taxes are funding and how these services improve or support their lives.

Another layer of understanding is about the connection between public schools and a citizen’s social responsibility. Many people take public education for granted. They forget that financing public education is a social contract. The society commits to educating its citizens, who then become productive contributors to the economy and political system; and who in turn educate a new generation.

The third layer is how people perceive public education as a social institution. Since news generally focuses on the bad or sensational, the public’s general impression about schools tends to be negative. At the core is how people perceive their own district’s quality and value. School leaders have the most responsibility for and ability to influence this essential question of how citizens perceive their district’s quality and its value to their community. Certainly, if they only hear about schools through general media outlets or at election time when they are being asked to pony up, their impression and attitude is going to be negative.

How do I start?
So how do we respond? While a school district won’t necessarily need a new hefty line item to implement a communications effort, hypothetically speaking, if a $50,000 investment in a communications plan produced a $500,000 tax override approval, would you consider that a positive return on investment? Gay Campbell, a nationally recognized expert on school funding campaigns surveyed schools in more than seven states and found a strong correlation between year-round communications programs and success at the polls for finance measures.

Although New England is known for its culture of Yankee frugality, a strong school committee and administration can warn against being penny wise and pound foolish. Every school administrator and school district has an image, whether planned or not. In fact, no communications or an uncoordinated and fragmented approach to communications may be costing you money in terms of lost productivity, diminished reputation, limited community support, and a host of collateral problems. Therefore, while you may not be accounting for it, you are probably already spending on communications.

The responsibilities of school leaders are increasingly broad and complex. Educators have more issues to face while expectations for transparency and accountability are rising. Taxpayers are becoming more concerned about the efficient use of their tax dollars and the value of their investment in public education. And parents are more insecure about the quality of public education and its contribution to their children’s future success in a global economy. Pessimism and anxiety are high. Someone needs to be telling the public the good news about education, especially when it comes to their district. When you don’t communicate, the public interprets the silence as: our school is just as bad as all these other schools in the news or, our school doesn’t have anything to do with me, doesn’t need me, and doesn’t care about me. These are clearly the wrong messages.

What are some messages you do want to communicate? First, what goes into the cost of education? Taxpayers need to be reminded that education services are provided by people who are doing challenging and important work and also have a living to make. They need to be reminded that in real dollar terms, the amount spent on education may be flat, and in many communities, declining because of override rejections. They need to be reminded that students today have more to learn than those of yesterday; and that schools are expected to successfully educate more kinds of learners than ever before. Most importantly, they need to be told that their schools are achieving these goals with the money generously provided by them, the taxpayers.

Second, who should pay for education? When a household no longer has children in the school system, they may feel that they no longer owe anything to the district. But in an average household of two children, where a typical 60% of the tax bill goes to paying for the cost to educate a child, it can take decades after the last child graduates for a family to pay off the cost of their own children’s education. So, empty-nesters need to understand that their tax dollars are not so much subsidizing the education of their neighbors’ children, as paying off the amortized and appreciated cost of their own children’s education. Unlike municipal services, which we pay for on an as-you-go basis, education is a social contract that allows us to benefit today and pay tomorrow.

Third, what is the value of public education? Remind citizens that public education is the engine that makes the economy and society progress. Talk about how the successes, achievements and activities of the district benefit the whole community. The greater the level of your outreach, the more taxpayers will value your existence, and the more they will support the financial measures you seek. These reminders of all the ways that schools are an asset to the community must occur all year long, not just when you need money.

Maintaining a steady flow of truthful, timely and relevant information will help educate parents and non-parents about the issues and achievements of your school district. Making formal and informal connections between the school’s mission and the community will garner support at critical times such as during emergencies, conflicts or the voting season. This may mean better press coverage, or it may mean actively going out to community groups to meet and greet. It may mean simply reviewing and improving how your staff deals with students, their parents and the public.

Look at any successful organization, whether in the for-profit, non-profit or even the public sector, and you will find a marketing, public relations and/or communications strategy. So whatever your communications plan you must continuously ask: Is this the best allocation of school resources? Am I getting the results I want? For you leaders out there, especially if you are not trained in public relations or marketing, you may also ask, is this the best use of my time, and if not, how can I get the expertise to achieve my communications objectives.

Actually, school districts large and small across the country are already incorporating these strategies in their priorities and plans. Some utilize professional communications and public relations personnel and consultants. Some have communications departments or departments of accountability. Some tap the services of their educational collaboratives. The National School Public Relations Association has more than a thousand members but very few are from New England. Some districts in New England are just now starting to reassess their communications strategies in light of both financial necessity and in response to crises. Wouldn’t it be more judicious to prevent these big problems from happening in the first place through a proactive strategic plan? And if you are already facing these problems, you have the perfect catalyst for change.

By being here today, you are already gaining consciousness of the power of communications. Introducing the concepts and tactics of a communications strategy does not have to be dramatic or costly. The next step may be simply to educate others. Have your leadership team attend workshops to learn about communications strategy development and techniques. Establish a committee to look at your various constituencies and current communications protocols. Develop a prioritized list of objectives. Work with your current staff to modify your existing practices to address these objectives. Consider hiring a consultant to work on discreet projects that will move you incrementally toward your goal of improving your community’s confidence in and commitment to your schools.

None of these initiatives require enormous funds, but while some investment in time, money and conviction will be required, the return on your investment may be enormous. Better marketing and communications will increase support for your schools, improve your ability to achieve your educational mission and better meet your community’s needs.