Talking points: Savvy message management helps you put your best foot forward, not in your mouth!

Public education is in crisis.

But then, when isn't it?

Maybe it's the norm. Public education is such a monumental undertaking—one of the greatest and most important endeavors of any society and nation—that crises are perhaps unavoidable and inevitable. Sometimes it seems like whatever can go wrong, will: If it isn't budget cuts or chronic underfunding, it's unsatisfactory test scores, achievement gaps, misguided reform efforts, bureaucratic snafus, workforce reductions, worrisome truancy or dropout rates or campus crime.

It’s always something.

Of course, there are success stories too—millions of them. More than 6.2 million students, kindergarten through 12th grade, attend public schools in California alone. The vast majority of these students receive solid, rewarding educations from dedicated teachers and administrators, lessons that will help prepare them for the rest of their lives. Each is a success in the flesh, a good news story waiting to be told.

But with so many children, and with stakes so high, skeptics and critics of public education are forever ready to pounce on any failure, real or perceived. And the ferocity of their attacks can reduce even the best school leaders to huffing protestations or tongue-tied silence.

The first is bad, the second is worse.

“Public education is a people business,” says Kelly Avants, administrator for communications and board relations in the Clovis Unified School District and 2007-08 president of the California School Public Relations Association. “It depends greatly upon the communications savvy of its employees.”

And the trustees, superintendents and other administrators—the leaders who provide a district’s vision of the future, solutions in the present and answers for the past—must be the savviest of all. If they can’t provide the needed vision, solutions and answers, and do so ably and articulately, then problems become crises and crises become compounded.

When that happens, even the savviest communicators may find themselves in trouble.

The media aren’t your messengers

Relatively few school districts are big enough or wealthy enough to afford full-time public relations professionals—someone who, as the National School Public Relations Association defines it, provides P.R. counsel, handles district communications (internal and external), deals with the media, promotes community involvement, monitors community perception, informs the public and trains others to do so as well.

“In my county, with 42 districts, only a handful have even one P.R. person, let alone a staff or department,” notes Jim Esterbrooks, a public information specialist for the San Diego County Office of Education for more than 20 years. “Usually the job falls to the superintendent by default.”

Superintendents are busy people, often dealing with a dozen different duties at any given time. As odd as it may sound, says Rich Bagin, NSPRA’s executive director, being a good communicator hasn’t been viewed as a top priority.

“The common idea was that they would lead and everything else would follow, that things would just happen. In today’s world, that doesn’t work,” Bagin observes. “Most people don’t have kids in schools. They don’t have any direct connection to education, maybe no connection at all, so any information they have is what they get from the media.”

A common complaint among educators (and many, many others) is that the media—primarily newspapers and their counterparts in radio and TV, but also including magazines, the Internet and other outlets—dwell too much upon the negative; they’re as quick to report public education’s every stumble as they are slow to report uplifting stories of successful school programs, high-achieving students, innovative practices or rewarding school-community partnerships. If it bleeds, it leads, the news industry saying goes; the corollary, at least to a reporter on the make, might be that good news is no news.

“There’s a strong belief among educators that the job of the media is to help get the good word out about schools,” says Frank Kwan, director of communications for the Los Angeles County Office of Education.

“It’s a fundamental misunderstanding,” Kwan cautions. “Reporters don’t see themselves as cheerleaders for schools.”

“It’s not the media’s job to report good news,” agrees Esterbrooks.

“The main role of the media is to be a watchdog, to make sure that taxpayers are getting their money’s worth out of public institutions,”
adds Bagin.

If there’s a story to be told—it doesn’t matter whether it’s good news or bad—school leaders should be the ones to tell it. There’s nobody in a better position.

“School leaders have to learn to do this on their own behalf, but in a credible fashion. That means being authoritative, transparent and proactive. The public already knows everything isn’t always going to be wonderful,” urges Bagin, the national school public relations group executive.

Don’ts—and dos

Terry Koehne, the community relations director of the San Ramon Valley Unified School District in Danville, says school leaders typically make three basic mistakes when dealing with the media about (negative) stories:

1. They’re not accessible.

2. They don’t do their homework.

3. They say too much.

“Remember,” Koehne says, “dead air is your friend. Don’t give in to the temptation to fill gaps in a conversation.” And don’t say anything you’re not willing to see in print.

On the other hand, experts advise, don’t be afraid to be forthright and forthcoming.

“If you’re going to have a healthy relationship with the media, you have to be open, honest and credible,” advises Bagin. “There are always going to be negative stories. Don’t ignore them or hope they’ll just go away. Some stories will be unfair or wrong. You should try to correct inaccuracies, but don’t whine or complain … about bad press. It doesn’t help anybody.”

LACOE’s Kwan adds this advice:

“Understand what the media really want in stories, and how it works. Be honest. If the story is negative, get the facts on the situation, provide context and any extenuating circumstances. Own up to mistakes.”

The National Association of Secondary School Principals offers these tips:

• Create a list of key media contacts: names and phone numbers. Include behind-the-scenes people, such as assignment editors or producers. Get to know them, their particular job duties and the kinds of stories they like or do well.

• When a national education story breaks, ask yourself whether it affects or relates to your district. If it does, call your media contacts and describe how. They’re always looking for local angles on big stories.

• Gather statistics and keep them handy. Use them to illustrate your message or point. Numbers can add weight, clarity and legitimacy to an opinion or point of view.

On the flip side, don’t shut down when times are tough, such as the issuing of mandated preliminary layoff notices during uncertain financial times. Avants, in the Clovis USD, says a mistake she frequently sees is school leaders attempting to block media inquiries or access to public information, usually because it involves bad news or controversy.

“In my district, we make a concerted effort to have open communication with our reporters. School leaders need to appreciate the job of a reporter and not equate a bad experience with the profession in general,” Avants says. “I try to always be very open with our reporters so that when issues come up that are confidential, and that by law we cannot comment on, they appreciate and understand the position we’re in. If you don’t have a history of stonewalling reporters, they are generally understanding when a time comes that you can’t talk about a specific incident.”

Be the medium

But staying on friendly talking terms with the local press is just part of the story.

Bagin recommends school officials establish and diligently maintain relationships and rapport with other community leaders. “Get to know them. Meet with them regularly. Send them updates of what’s happening. It builds trust and credibility. Then, when something bad happens, these leaders will better understand what’s going on. They’ll know you and they’ll be more supportive.”

If you’ve got a story to tell, newspapers, radio and TV are no longer the only ways to tell it. The media’s mass has grown exponentially with the Internet. (An estimated 71 percent of Americans are wired and online.) Every district should have a “well-presented Web presence,” according to Esterbrooks, one that is smartly designed, interactive, easy-to-use and regularly updated. Avoid the opposite—the static, unchanging site that contains old or useless information. It can do more harm to a district’s image than a bad news story.

Esterbrooks also thinks blogs are a good idea for school leaders—if they have the time, talent and inclination. “Blogs are vibrant, dynamic and highly used,” he says. “They reach a lot of people.”

And now the good news

Effective communication is a two-way process, says Trent Allen, director of information and communications for Sacramento’s San Juan Unified School District and incoming president of the California School Public Relations Association.

“Good communication is just as much about gathering information as it is about disseminating it.”

That means having a plan, a goal for each message.

“What do we want people to know or do after we have delivered our message,” asks Allen. “What is the best way to deliver the message to each of our audiences—students, parents, voters, local officials, neighboring districts, business and state leaders—and how can we tailor it to be well received?

“Every newsletter story, mass notification phone call or Web page should start with the question: What action do we want the audience to take? The question starts the process of designing an effective communication tool.”

In times of crisis—maybe in most times—it’s easy to focus on the negative, but Bagin at NSPRA says it’s important to remain positive and proactive. That’s what leaders do and what people expect.

And really, Bagin adds, it’s not that hard. Just remember four things:

• Schools are better than ever and scores prove it.

• Public education remains a bargain—
for everybody.

• Schools do more for all children than
ever before.

• Schools are the best and safest places for children to be.

Everybody wants to hear those stories.

Scott LaFee is a regular contributor to California Schools.