A Cowboy’s Guide To School Board
Member P.R.
Susan Salter
Director of Public Relations
Alabama Association of School Boards
susan@theaasb.org
Don’t squat with your spurs on. From
over-zealous zero tolerance policies to overly strict limits on public comments
in board meetings, school boards can be the creators of their own P.R. pain.
Does yours have policies or practices that could cause serious image damage
down the road? If you don’t know, take time to review the policy manual and the
general practices of your board meetings. Ask yourself:
·
Are discipline policies flexible enough to allow
reasonable punishment for innocent mistakes? Or, will they
force you to expel a first-grader for having a Tweety Bird nail clipper?
·
How will you handle an angry delegation that arrives
unexpectedly at a board meeting and wants to speak? Will your
existing practices soothe troubled waters or stir up a hurricane?
·
Do citizens know how to get on the agenda? Craft a “Welcome
to Our Meeting” flyer to distribute at schools and meetings. Explain how board
meetings work, when/how the board allows public comments, any guidelines for
comments, and what to do/who to call with complaints.
Good fences make good neighbors. A school board
and superintendent who respect each other’s turf can work together on mutually
agreed upon goals and lead as a cohesive unit. But when board members
micromanage, destructive range wars are almost inevitable. Remember (and help
the public understand) that the board creates the vision for the schools, sets
policy and holds the superintendent accountable; the superintendent manages
day-to-day operations and oversees investigations of personnel problems. When
parents come to board members with complaints, they should listen politely and
refer them to the superintendent or appropriate staff member.
Close the barn door before the horse gets out. Your staff can be
your best P.R. communicators or your worst nightmare. Do they feel respected
and appreciated? Set a high standard of professional competence 
for staff members, and then publicly recognize those who
excel. Let them know you value their expertise by including them on advisory
panels and task forces, looking to them for solutions, and encouraging them to
be part of school and system goal-setting activities.
And, always keep staff informed about
decisions and issues. Nothing torpedoes a great new program like having
rank-and-file employees out questioning its effectiveness or cost at the grocery
store or ball fields.
Say it plain
and save some breath for breathin’. Are your meetings fogged with terms
like NCLB, disaggregated data, IEPs, FERPA or other jargon that chokes the life
out of a discussion? To help folks understand discussions clearly, ask the
superintendent and staff to avoid acronyms and explain education terms during
their presentations to the board. For particularly complex discussions, ask the
staff to prepare a simple handout outlining the issues and defining the terms
for audience members.
Even if you’re on the right track you’ll
get run over if you just sit there. Don’t let yourself or your board get
so bogged down in personnel/budget/transportation issues that you – and the
public – lose sight of the instructional program.
·
Restructure your agenda. Spend at least
as much time addressing student learning as you do books and buses.
·
Hold an annual work session to review the results of the
testing program. Ask the superintendent to identify instructional
strengths and weakness as well as areas to be improved. Again, insist
discussions be in plain English, not education-ese.
·
Hold an annual goal-setting retreat or work session. Review progress
on last year’s goals and set priorities for next year.
·
Honor student and staff accomplishments at every board
meeting. This helps keep you focused and reiterates successes to
the public and media.
·
Periodically have teachers or students demonstrate an
innovation that is affecting them.
·
Post a sign in the boardroom asking, “How will this affect
children?”
Never take to
sawing the branch that’s supporting you unless you’re being hung from it. Because we are so familiar with our
schools’ problems and challenges, it is easy to think we know the best solutions.
But to gain – and keep – the community support you need, treat the public like
co-owners, not customers, or worse, like disinterested parties. To do that:
·
Use 2-way communication. Spend at least as
much time listening to what citizens want for their children and schools as you
do talking about your programs and accomplishments. Create regular
opportunities for them to share their input before
decisions get made.
·
Launch a community conversation. Focus on a
school issue or children’s issues in general. Invite all comers to discuss and
help develop a shared vision for solving the problem(s). Use the results as a
map for charting your course.
·
Create eye-openers. Periodically,
host informal breakfast meetings with a community group (perhaps Realtors one
time, ministers another) to help them understand an issue or program. Allow
plenty of time for questions, and use those questions to help map your
communication strategies.
·
Create your personal key communicators network. Make a point to
tell opinion leaders regularly about things going on in the schools and to ask
what they are hearing.
If somebody outdraws you, smile and walk
away. There’s plenty of time to look tough when you’re out of sight. A surefire way to shoot your schools’ image
in the foot is for board members, the superintendent or staff to become mired
in a battle of wills. Remember, board members have no individual authority.
It’s only when they sit as a board that decisions can be made. Even when they
disagree, trust that your fellow board members are working just as hard as you
are to make the right decisions for children. Board members must accept that
the majority rules and move on. Criticizing the choice (or board members) only
harms the system in the long run.
An Open Letter
At press time,
Governor Riley’s series of bills addressing Alabama’s funding crisis was still
being considered by the legislature. No doubt, you have already heard from
those who suggest the problem is not the amount of money we budget, but how it
is spent. Here is a response to just such a letter received by the state
Department of Education.
It’s no secret that investing
in education now saves on investing in prisons and social service programs down
the road. But if, in economic hard times, we rob education budgets — requiring
major cuts in summer school and after-school programs, and less traditional
courses such as music and art, access to textbooks and qualified teachers —
aren’t we really robbing our children of brighter futures and our society of
one of the greatest tools for economic development...well-educated and
productive citizens?
Governor Riley’s tax reform package is simply about fairness —
something we have not known in this state for decades. It gives breaks to the
less fortunate and requires those with more to pay their fair share. Under
Riley’s proposal, more than half of Alabama families, those with earnings of
$47,000 a year or less, would see a decrease in their income taxes. The state’s
median family income is $41,000. Simply put: the poor — who pay a greater share
of their income in taxes — would see their state taxes fall, while wealthy
taxpayers — who pay a much smaller share of their income — would see some
increases. In the end, it’s a more balanced approached to fundamentally
changing how we do business in Alabama.
However, even if we double property taxes in Alabama we will still be
below the rest of the nation and Southeast. We can no longer even say “Thank
God for Mississippi.”
The fact that we have to “live within a limited budget” is
something we’ve known in K-12 education for the last several years. In fact,
the state’s K-12 Education budget was cut in 2001 and most local school systems
had to either borrow money or dip into any reserve accounts to help ensure
services did not suffer. The following year (2002), was an election year.
Although proration (a budget reduction) probably should have been declared, it
was not because 2002 was an election year. So here we are in 2003, the third
consecutive year of cash-strapped schools and social services (note the federal
lawsuit against the state for underfunded and overcrowded prisons, as well as
another federal lawsuit against the transportation department, not to mention
the rising cost of Medicaid for the elderly, etc.). Budgets for such services
have been lean and mean and Governor Riley, like others before him, cannot
ferret all the waste and inefficiencies to help solve the nearly $700 million
dollar budget shortfalls that now exist. Something more substantial must be
done to reform our funding for such key measures, or we will forever be in the
bottom tier states in ranking after ranking.
When the public demanded more accountability in education, we
delivered. We've done more with less for the last eight years. In fact, the
1995 education accountability law passed by the Alabama Legislature now helps
our state's K-12 lead the nation with many improvements. We now have the
toughest graduation requirements in the nation. College admission scores for
Alabama’s seniors have been above the regional average for the last fives years
(and with more students taking the test). We’ve developed the highly successful
Alabama Reading Initiative and Alabama Math, Science, and Technology
Initiative, which other states are copying. Additionally, our career and
technical education programs are now aligned to business and industry
standards. Plus, every school and school system receives a report card, which
is sent home to parents that evaluates performance in academics, general school
information, and financial management. The federal No Child Left Behind Act
continues to bring more transparency and accountability in public education.
All of these programs and strategies are an investment in our state’s future.
Now we must have the money to more fully implement or risk losing the many
gains we have made over the last several years.
I hope you will support the Governor’s efforts to help build a
world-class infrastructure in Alabama. Imagine the possibilities.
PRO’S Corner
Dealing With Rogue Reporters
By Jerry Brown, APR
Senior Counselor-Public
Relations
Corporate Advocates, LLC
The New York Times’ admission that one of its
reporters fabricated and plagiarized stories for more than a year is a stark
example of one of the toughest problems faced by public relations professionals
and their clients: Reporters who write inaccurate or unfair stories.
Here are six guidelines for
dealing with rogue reporters who can’t or won’t get it right:
1. Start with the reporter. If you have a complaint about a
story, talk to the reporter first. Don’t go over the reporter’s head unless you
absolutely have to.
2. Document your complaint. If you take your case to an
editor, document the problems you’re having with the reporter. If other
reporters got the story/stories right, document that, too.
3. Take a reasoned and reasonable approach. Neither the
reporter nor his/her editors will care whether you consider the story
“positive” or “negative.” But you are entitled to fair and accurate coverage.
Good journalists will listen if you can make a compelling case that the
reporter’s coverage is consistently unfair or inaccurate.
4. Pick your battles.
Sad to say, mistakes are reasonably commonplace in news stories. Don’t ignore
factual inaccuracies that do you harm. But save your real battles for the ones
that really matter. And don’t complain just because the reporter didn’t give
the story your “spin.”
5. Be patient. It may take awhile. The Times received
complaints from many sources about its reporter for a year before taking
action. The paper finally acted after another newspaper complained about plagiarism
and went public with its complaint.
6. Look for alternative ways to tell your story. If possible,
find other avenues for telling your story -- other news organizations, your Web
site, your employee publications, direct contact with customers/clients — when
a reporter who covers you is consistently inaccurate or unfair.
Quotes
A Rose By Any
Other Name…
In real life, unlike in
Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things
are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they
seem to be.
Hubert
Humphrey
Suburbia is where the developer
bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them
Bill
Vaughn
The scientific name for an
animal that doesn't either run from or fight its enemies is lunch.
Michael
Friedman
Forgive your enemies, but
never forget their names.
John F.
Kennedy
Property left to a child may
soon be lost; but the inheritance of virtue — a good name an unblemished
reputation — will abide forever. If those who are toiling for wealth to leave
their children, would but take half the pains to secure for them virtuous
habits, how much more serviceable would they be. The largest property may be
wrested from a child, but virtue will stand by him to the last.
William
Sumner
Web Notes
PR On The Web
– Some Summertime Reading
www.internetprguide.com/pr_insight
Links to several articles on
public relations
www.frugalmarketing.com/dtb/press.shtml
How to get the media on your
side!
For good media relations, treat
them like customers!
www.netpreneur.org/news/prmachine/pr/default.html
The 10 elements of an effective
news release
www.arfunk.com/getontvnews.html
How to get your story on local
TV news.
http://publicrelations.about.com
Quick and easy resources for
maintaining good public relations.
Quick Facts
(From USA Today)
Stylebook
Use Metaphors To Communicate, Not Decorate
(From Writing That Works www.apexawards.com/metaphors.htm)
Good
metaphors emerge from the writer’s experience and observation. They connect the
readers’ knowledge to new ideas or information through concrete images. No
matter what you’re writing, you can use metaphors to create images that make
the abstract concrete, says writer and writing teacher Rebecca McClanahan.
“When you
work in images, you are connecting with the sensory experience of your reader,”
she says. Appealing to several parts of the brain, good metaphors connect with
readers at a deeper level than straight facts and help them remember what they’ve
read.
“You can’t
escape metaphor. Our language is full of it,” McClanahan says. Metaphors are so
common from our early years (e.g., “Little pitchers have big ears”) that we
forget their power in introducing new information or presenting old ideas in a
new way. Effective metaphors are so embedded in the language we sometimes don’t
realize we’re using figurative language.
Too often, however, writers borrow
others’ metaphors (e.g., “surfing the Net”) that have become clichés. Good
metaphors are original, but not weird or strange. “When you are writing from
inside your own experience, you’re quite likely to arrive at original
metaphors,” says McClanahan. She agrees with Aristotle that metaphors are
perceptions of resemblances, so each writer’s metaphors should come from his or
her perceptions.
Don’t write
your piece and then go back and insert metaphors to embellish it. They should
be born during your thinking process, part of your way of arriving at a new
thought. Open yourself up to seeing likenesses, transfers and connections as
you write.
Examine your
metaphors after you’ve completed your draft, the writer advises. Delete clichés
and check for accuracy. For example, “Her tears gushed like a geyser” is a
ridiculous image because it’s inaccurate. While metaphors stray from the
literal truth, they must make sense. If they’re far-fetched or strange, the
reader won’t accept them. The whole piece becomes endangered.
When writers
use one metaphor, they often toss in another, but don’t let metaphors compete
for readers’ attention. After reading a good metaphor, the reader needs time to
think about it. So leave in only your best metaphors.
Make sure
your metaphors are fresh and that you’re saying just enough. You mustn’t
sidetrack, and thereby lose, readers. “The metaphor has to serve the larger
idea,” McClanahan says.
In
evaluating your metaphors, ask a simple question: Have I heard this before? If
it’s familiar, decide whether it’s a tired cliché or serves to establish your
ground.
A bad
metaphor is worse than no metaphor. “If it doesn't spring naturally from the
writer’s eye and ear, the writer’s own connection with the world, it’s going to
feel false.”
Metaphors
shouldn’t stand out. If the reader stops to admire the words, you’ve
interrupted the thought. The metaphor should be so obvious you can’t pull it
out. “The purpose of writing isn’t to make a metaphor but to take readers on
whatever journey you want to take them.”
Just For Fun
Featured
School Site — D.A. Smith Middle School (Ozark City)
National School Public Relations Association
Alabama
School Communicators Association