Marketing Needed to Stimulate Attendance - Brief Article

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), August, 1999

Competition for enrollment has caused public schools to market themselves in order to attract students. Kent Stewart, professor of educational administration, Kansas State University, Manhattan, indicates that the practice of marketing is new to many public school officials who find themselves wing for students with other educational alternatives.

"If you were the president of a private school, you would realize that the kids who come to your private school come there for your reputation, or because you invited them, or because you marketed that school to the public, and students then made a decision to attend your school. In public schools, the kids all have to go. But now we have more and more parents opting to home school, or send their children to religious schools, or to magnet schools, or to a neighboring school district. So consequently, our public schools are now in competition with four other kinds of schools."

Stewart says the reasons parents are looking at other education options is because of what they read in the newspapers. Violence, drugs, alcohol, and pregnancy are some fears that cause parents to enroll their offspring elsewhere. "Parents say, `I don't want anything to do with public schools. They've got a bunch of kids ... with guns, and they're violent, dangerous places, and I'm sending my kid to a private school. I don't care how much it costs.' One kid can pull a prank and cause people to wonder about the propriety of the whole school when there's really nothing wrong with the school. Isolated incidents cause people to draw wrong conclusions."

Public school officials are just beginning to awaken to the fact that they have to market their schools to the public in a fashion that will encourage parents and students to elect to remain in them. Many administrators aren't doing it because they haven't the experience or training on how to market their institutions to potential attendees.

Stewart suggests little things like sending school newspapers to all mailbox holders in the district, having annual banquets to present a variety of awards to students for activities they have been involved in and achievements they have made, giving senior citizens free passes to athletic events at the school, and hosting a dinner before an athletic event can help in marketing image. "They're just common run-of-the-mill things that school officials can do to keep the school and the success of that school in the eyes of the public to show that a public school is not as bad a place as they might think it is."