Publications
Newsletters, mailers, flyers, rack cards, and more. High quality publications with appealing visuals, engaging content, and professional writing help enhance your school district’s brand and drive for excellence.
Centralia School District newsletter revival
By 2015, Centralia School District’s newsletter had grown stale, and stakeholders were largely ignoring it due a lack of engaging content. Print costs were high, even though it was a simple two-color, 11×17 spread.
We completely redesigned the newsletter, simply calling it “Newsletter” with a new layout, color graphics and photos, storytelling and other engaging/relevant content.
The improvements were noticed immediately. Stakeholders began calling the district office to complain about the new “high-cost professional” newsletter.
The truth was that we had greatly reduced costs by switching print vendors, while still providing a higher quality product.
Click here to see the full Spring 2017 Newsletter
2018 Washington State Public Relations Association Best in Category & Award of Excellence – School Newsletter
Commitment to serving all stakeholders
Also in 2015, Centralia School District made a commitment to better serve our non-English speaking stakeholders. Nearly 45 percent of the district’s students were Hispanic. A large portion of them spoke only Spanish in the home.
Boletín was created as a Spanish language companion to our new newsletter. The layout, graphics, publication size, and everything else are exactly the same as the English version, creating equity in information sharing.
Levy and Bond Elections
Informative deliverables for bond and levy elections
Washington State relies on voter approved levies to supplement state funding for educational opportunities and programs. Athletics, for example, is 100 percent funded by levies in most school districts. Levies give more local control over the opportunities a school district can offer.
Likewise, local voter approval is required to issue bonds for school renovation or new construction. Bonds require a 60 percent supermajority for approval.
Clear, easy-to-read deliverables like one-sheets, postcards, and flyers are vital for sharing accurate information with voters.
In Washington, levy information materials may be informative but not persuasive when public funds are used.
2023 Washington State School Public Relations Association Award of Excellence – Special Purpose Publication.
Case Study: 2017 Centralia School District Bond Campaign
In 2017 Centralia School District was facing a facilities crisis. Every school in the district was aging; some were beginning to become unsafe. One elementary school had only one working pair of restrooms for over 400 students.
Centralia hadn’t passed a bond since the mid 1980s, despite at least 15 attempts. No new schools had been built since 1969. Two new elementary schools and a new or rebuilt high school were absolutely necessary to provide safe, modern facilities for education.
The district engaged in a energetic community blitz with mailers, flyers, social media campaigns, public meetings, and videos. I personally engaged with a local community PAC to help them with a persuasive message campaign that the district could not.
The 2017 levy passed by 61.8 percent – a number I had accurately predicted to the local newspaper editor on the morning of election day
E-Newsletters
QuickNews email newsletter
The QuickNews e-newsletter concept began in Centralia and came with me to Othello School District in 2020. It was created as a way to reach more of our stakeholder groups who we could not reach via social media, print, etc.
The content of the weekly QuickNews letter was created in real time with content for other platforms like our website and newsletter. This made publication far less time consuming and helped improve consistency and brand recognition.
QuickNews was distributed via email and ParentSquare.