New duties planned for community ed director

Shingler to manage district’s marketing efforts
By: 
Lee Pulaski
City Editor

An updated job description for Shawano School District’s community education director passed the district’s executive committee with flying colors on Aug. 5.

The description will go to the school board for final approval on Aug. 17.

The issue of the director’s job duties came up in July when the board was approving pay raises for administrators. While most administrators were getting increases just under 2%, the community education director was slated to see a pay hike from $45,000 to $65,000, and some board members balked at the idea of such an increase without seeing, in writing, what additional duties the director would take on to merit the higher pay.

“I wanted to add community outreach to this position and raise it to a cabinet level,” said Randi Anderson, district superintendent. “We need to ramp up our marketing if we want to reach that plan of being a district of destination.”

The director, Robyn Shingler, will need to take the lead in the district’s marketing and community engagement, a job that has not been assigned to a specific person for several years. Shingler will be expected to represent the entire district, in addition to Shawano Community Education at community events and communicate regularly with community members to identify specific needs and wants that the district should address.

“She will be a key position in our community partnerships,” Anderson said.

Shingler will also be tasked with being the public relations spokesperson, regularly collaborating with the superintendent on issues that need to be released to the public. She will also be responsible for printing and distributing quarterly newsletters for the district.

Shingler will work in concert with Social School 4 EDU, a marketing firm hired by the district earlier this year, to monitor social media content for the district. She is also expected to promote the district through print publications, radio, television and networking with organizations.

Branding consistency will also be on Shingler’s list of things to do.

“We won’t change things overnight, but we’ll put a plan in place to look at what colors we’re going to use, what our hawk is going to look like — because we have a variety of hawks out there (in publicity materials) — even what fonts we’re going to use,” Anderson said. “Being consistent will help us reinforce the social media side.”

The new job description will also elevate the community education director position to a “cabinet” position, according to Anderson, the same as principals and other directors in maintenance, human resources, technology and more.

Board member Diane Hoffman praised the plan bringing the position back up to a higher cabinet level but was confused as to why it stopped being that high to begin with.

Board member Michael Sleeper said the new job description should “spell out” what Shingler will be expected to do to earn the extra $20,000 in pay.

Board member Chuck Dallas appreciated learning of the job duties but felt it should not have been necessary for the board to delay Shingler’s pay hike until the new job description was completed.

“I thought this was truly a micromanagement issue in how this was handled,” Dallas said. “On all other boards I work with at very high levels, all I worry about is the CEO.”

lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com