Practical PR: The Importance of Effective School Communication
By Keegan Kociss
School districts affect two of the most important resources in any community: Its children and its tax dollars. Because of a district’s important role in the community, communication should never be an afterthought. Yet many districts are unable to staff a dedicated communications professional, leaving those responsibilities to principals, secretaries, or other educators or office staff who are already carrying full workloads. Districts that invest in a dedicated communications professional gain far more than a sender of messages. They gain a strategic partner who can be even more effective with a seat at the leadership table.
What a School Communications Professional Does
Educational public relations is designed to improve the programs and services of a district or school through two-way communications with internal and external audiences. Not just communicating to the audience, but with the audience. The overall goal is to build understanding and support for the district’s role, strategic goals, accomplishments, and needs.
In practice, the work spans crisis communications, external communications, social media management, community relations, media relations, website management, and internal communications. Beyond the day-to-day tasks, the deeper value lies in building trust among the school system, its families, staff, taxpayers, and community. School PR professionals share positive stories, gather feedback, and ensure accurate and timely information reaches the right audiences.
Strategic Communication: More Than Tactics
There is an important distinction between communication and strategic communication. Many school staff members can draft clear emails or social media posts. What a trained communications professional brings is the ability to connect every message to the district’s larger goals, always asking how the communication advances the district’s strategic plan.
Being proactive rather than reactive is strategic. Most trained school communications professionals have communications templates for any incident. An email template, phone call script, or social media post is ready in case of a surprise lockdown, snow day, or award-winning teacher announcement. This ensures the district maintains control of the message, responding to requests for comment only after gathering all pertinent facts.
Crisis Communication Requires a Dedicated Focus
Being proactive is especially important in a crisis. During a crisis, every staff member has a role: Counting students, coordinating with first responders, and comforting families. Without someone dedicated to the communications function, misinformation fills the void quickly. In an era when students carry smartphones and information floods the internet before administrators even have the full picture, a communications professional who can deliver accurate and timely messages is not a luxury. A dedicated communications professional will gather the facts, offer guidance, and ensure appropriate transparency with affected audiences and the media, while administrators deal with their own responsibilities. The skill and preparation a communications professional is trained with cannot be easily improvised.
No Dedicated Communications Professional?
Many districts lack the resources to hire a dedicated communications professional. That does not mean communication should be set aside. It means the work must be deliberately assigned, protected, and supported. Here are a few tips if your district doesn’t have a dedicated professional:
Use your tools appropriately and consistently. Keep websites current and mobile-friendly, take advantage of platform training, and use delivery analytics to understand how audiences engage with your messages. There are so many tools that help deliver messaging, including the district’s mass communication platform (Finalsite, ParentSquare, Apptegy), social media management tools (Sprout Social, Buffer, Hootsuite), and design tools (Canva, Adobe Express).
Know how to use your tools. Is a pre-recorded call sent to all families necessary to preview the week’s events, or would a weekly newsletter better serve the district? Survey your families to determine whether they prefer to receive emails, texts, or app notifications, and how often they’d like to hear from the district. Take that data into account when planning your messaging.
Find your champions. Staff, parents, students, board members, and community members who believe in your district’s mission can help amplify your messages. Involving multiple voices, including student voices, makes the district’s story more authentic and far-reaching.
INSPRA: Professional Development for Anyone Who Communicates
INSPRA, the Illinois Chapter of the National School Public Relations Association, is the only professional organization in the state dedicated specifically to helping school districts strengthen public support for education. Membership is not limited to communications professionals. Any district employee whose role involves communicating with families, staff, or the community can benefit.
That means principals, superintendents, assistant superintendents, HR directors, board members, and anyone else who regularly communicates on behalf of the district are the people that INSPRA is built to serve. Our monthly Tips and Tactics professional development sessions are designed to help anyone responsible for school communications stay current on best practices. Whether the topic is crisis response, social media strategy, family engagement, or brand consistency, these sessions deliver practical information that can be applied by almost any school employee. The monthly PD is available both in person and virtually and can be viewed at any time following the event.
Beyond Tips and Tactics, INSPRA members gain access to the “Member Needs Help” program, which allows any member to seek advice and real-world examples from colleagues across the state. Using this same network of peers, members can also obtain guidance on challenges affecting Illinois schools each day. By finding colleagues in similar districts, members can collaborate to discuss issues and solve problems affecting their districts.
Effective communication is not a luxury reserved for large districts with dedicated staff. It is a responsibility that every district owes to its students, families, employees, and taxpayers. Whether a district has a full communications team, a single communications professional, or staff members who have taken on communications duties alongside their other responsibilities, the commitment to clear, consistent, and strategic communication should be considered the same.
Tools, training, and professional networks are available to help meet that commitment. Organizations like INSPRA exist specifically to help Illinois school districts build that capacity, regardless of where they start. Investing in communications is investing in community trust, and community trust is the foundation on which everything else a school district hopes to accomplish is built.
Keegan Kociss is the Communications Specialist for CCSD 146 in Tinley Park and the President of the Illinois Chapter of the National School Public Relations Association (INSPRA).