When a crisis happens, you don’t have days to make a decision; you have seconds. Often, those decisions involve students, staff, and teachers that you know and love. One wrong move can mean loss of enrollment, loss of community support, loss of your job and bad press. Mishandling a crisis could cost your district years of progress.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) was a light in a very dark room for school leaders who needed funding to deal with the ramifications of the pandemic. But now we face a secondary crisis: how to use the remaining funds to make the biggest impact on our schools before the lapse of the deadline.

Fall is fast approaching, and you have a looming staffing shortage for the 2023-2024 academic year. Keep reading to find out my recommendations for attracting and securing fresh candidates in the “off-season” for the 2023-2024 academic year. 

Whether you’re a new administrator looking ahead to twenty or thirty more years in your career or you’re thinking about moving up your retirement or changing your career, you have to ask yourself one question. If the teachers are supporting the students and you’re supporting the teachers, who is supporting you?

Many things have changed in school communications in the last thirty years. Technology has evolved, trends have come and gone and social media has emerged as more of a tool than just a simple pastime. Districts now have the option to be more proactive about improving community relations by leveraging their social media presence effectively.

So, as a school administrator, how can you guarantee that your district is equipped to handle any crisis or emergency if your communications officer is unavailable? On-call, interim crisis communications support can give you peace of mind.

You can solve problems in your district using a simple marketing strategy for adding landing pages and lead magnets to your website.

In K-12, not everyone has considered the relationship between district and families as a customer/provider one. The sad truth is that many K-12 administrators fail to consider customer service training until a widespread problem surfaces and the damage has been done.

Throughout all my travels, I’ve observed some interesting changes in the way we use storytelling to shape public opinion in K-12. I want to share what I've seen and learned to give you a benchmark by which you can gauge your school's PR health. 

I want to share with you my experience as a fourth-generation Mexican American who has spent the last 25 years leveraging school communications to ensure every child has a fighting chance at reaching their full potential.

If you’ve been paying attention over the last few years, you may have noticed a shift in the relationships between K-12 staff and parents.

There’s a meme floating around social media that says, “Kids today: Find out school is canceled via text. Me: Had to wake up at 5 a.m. and watch the bottom of the screen like the NFL Draft.”