Shawano School District seeks to boost image

The Shawano School District will be paying $10,000 per year for the next three years to a marketing firm that promises to bolster the schools’ image on social media.

The board voted unanimously on an agreement with Social School 4 EDU to have them take photos, posts and other items and turn them into engaging items on various social media. Chris Marcks, a coordinator in the district’s human resources department, noted the district already has a good presence on Facebook but was unsure how well it was utilizing Twitter and Instagram.

“Social media, it’s obviously going to go with or without us,” Marcks said.

Currently, staff members are posting items when they can, specifically community education director Robyn Shingler and administrative assistant Lori Sherman, but Marcks said this would free up staff to focus on educating instead of worrying about communicating with the community and others interested in the district.

The firm’s website touts its director, Andrea Gribble, as a “natural-born cheerleader” who started her program in 2013 after being laid off from her corporate job and was asked by a school district in New Auburn to help with its social media image. The website claims it is currently helping hundreds of schools across the country with social media storytelling; school districts in Shiocton and Menasha are among them.

Marcks told the board that working with Gribble and her group of case managers would help the district to build its “social capital,” which she described as feel-good stories intended to shed a positive light on the district. Social School 4 EDU would be expected to develop a strategy for the district to post items in a timely fashion, monitor comments on social media and more.

“What is our strategy for social media? My brief time here shows we don’t have one,” Marcks said. “I’m still trying to figure it out.”

Marcks touted the importance of social media when it comes to boosting enrollment and community engagement. She suggested using the various platforms to help create a virtual academy showcasing what the district’s four schools can do to help with children’s education.

Social School 4 EDU is also expected to take the lead when it comes to crisis management. The district recently had to take swift action to distance itself from a Facebook post by school board member Mart Grams that stated, “You know George Floyd has been drug free for 2 months.” A statement denouncing Grams’ statement and claiming it doesn’t reflect the district’s views was posted on Facebook on July 12 prior to an emergency board meeting.

Marcks said that Social School 4 EDU could eliminate the need to have staff members work on a weekend to update social media, as the firm has case managers working 24-7 to deal with school districts and their needs.

“When it comes to crisis management, you’ve already put it out there and shared so much good stuff that the bad stuff doesn’t seem as bad when it happens,” Marcks said. “If we don’t write our story and use social media to convey it, somebody else is going to write that, and I really don’t want to see that happen.”

Marcks also suggested the firm would be valuable whenever the district wanted to pursue a referendum. She noted that she had been on a committee working to get taxpayer support on a joint recreation center between the school district and the city of Shawano, which was voted down in November 2019 after community members came out and claimed they couldn’t support it. One of the reasons given by several people was they had no idea what was going on in the schools.

“When the time comes to say, ‘This is something we support, and we want your support, as well, to move forward,’ we can utilize social media very efficiently to do that,” Marcks said.

Board member Michael Sleeper pointed out that larger school districts have communication specialists on staff that handle items like this, and he felt the $10,000 per year would be a “tremendously sound investment.”

“If we don’t tell our story, someone else will,” Sleeper said. “We need to control that.”

The Shawano district had created a communication position in 2015 to handle social media and other publicity outlets for the district at a cost of $34,000 per year, but that post was eliminated a year later.

“I think we suffered because of it,” said board president Tyler Schmidt.

The contract offered up would cost $30,000 for the three years, but it also offered a one-year option for $11,000. Board member Diane Hoffman said that one year would not be enough time to bolster the district’s image.

Marcks noted that, if the district is able to grow enrollment and get out of the current downward trend, that would outweigh the expense being put into Social School 4 EDU.

lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com