Elliott_Davis's Blog

Im glad I got out of the district this year. I cant imagine what it will be like next year. The schools were already down the bare minimum. I thought it was strange last year when they passed the large salary increase. After all they had to pass a bond issue a few years back to fix up schools, increase technology and wages.

theredmenace: Absolutely. If a school needs to do some PR work and hire a firm at $160,000 per clip - then the board isn't doing there job and shut it down!

What do you mean by I can't expect a school board to run it? What is a school boards function then? There should be no PR work necessary for any school unless that school has done some bad things and they need to save face.

When a school board or superintendent need to convey a message to it's taxpaying bodies then it's called email, snailmail, or a note in each child's paperwork. One does not need to go out and blow an average supers salary on PR.

I have seen this in several organizations I have been involved with. A company hires a person to do a job but then hires a consultant firm to do the same job usually at four times the cost.

However schools today have to sell themselves to prove to the public that their tax dollars are being spent wisely (at least in the district’s view anyway). Today with the Internet you can instantly read and view what various schools and districts are doing. Not to mention there are many good things that happen at school that doesn’t get reported. Again, who wants to sift through pages of statistics to see if the school met their AYP or not? Plus students are involved in plays, sports, and a whole range of extracurricular activities. All we hear about is what happens on the football field or basketball court.

In the old days before the Internet school districts at the request of the real estate companies would publish brochures about the school district. Some districts still print brochures but put most of the money to pay for a web designer and/or web provider to get the message out.

For many district the PR budget is $160,000 to cover printing, website design and maintenance, visuals for presentations, and any other special projects through out the year. Usually there is a director with one to three assistants (I call them grunts who actually do the work).

Elliott is right on the money. Keep in mind that Mehlville (I live in the district) thought they had lots of reserves..they goofed. Now they are scambling to repleish the coffers when the finance director obviously couldn't do the job. Public schools once served a valued purpose but now they are just another government institution...a waste of taxpayer money that spends more on fluff and sports than on true education.

Mehlville's problem wasn't that they didn't have an outside P.R. firm.. They had a Communications Director on staff who made $70,000. They're in house communications buddget was $250,000..Certainly enough to get the word out.
On top of all that they went out and hired this P.R. Firm for $160,000.
The firm isn't analyzing data to reply to state education requirements. That's done by other workers on staff. The P.R. company just goes around to the various school offices and picks up the information that others compile and then repackage it. Like buying a watch and you don't like the box..So you go out and buy a thousand dollar box to put the same watch in.
The problem in Mehlville was bad fiscal forecasting. That created the bad image that the board is trying to clean up with pricey P.R.
But at the end of the day they're still going to have to cut a million bucks from the budget, and try and get voters to bail them out of this P.R. nightmare.

The district did not "come clean" on the budget crisis. I broke it on my BLOG.
http://southcountynews.blogspot.com/
They tried to delay dealing with the issue while someone was running for re-election.
UNICOM.ARC was not hired originally to do PR. They were hired to do a public engagement process which is not an area that your average PR department can handle.While I wouldn't have been for it as a board member because of the high cost, it's not unusual for districts the size of Mehlville to bring in outside consultants for this process. This could have been explained in great detail by any of the district's senior administrators but Mr. Diehl decided to get in front of the cameras.Our school board has very little experience with school district business. That's why they couldn't see the warning signs while they were being lead down the path to financial distress.
This UNICOM.ARC is just a symptom, the disease is the Call Newspapers.

Horse what? If you ask Mr. Noble, he will tell you that he had grave concerns after the budget vote last year. That's before he actually worked for the district.
Check the dates on the release of the information against what is on my blog. I think Mr. Noble is a very intelligent man and I know of no one who has questioned his integrity. The PR director was in trouble long before UNICOM.ARC was in the picture due to Board Member Karl Frank and his relationship with the Call Newspapers.Frank has wanted to fire Wallace for campaigning against him and his refusal to violate board policy(Wallace would not release a copy of a copyrighted picture to the Call Newspapers without the owner's permission). This is not relavant to the hiring of UNICOM.ARC.You are correct that PR is important for any organization and having an single department is the most efficient was to manage that. Unfortunately, efficiency is not always what the public wants, although they say they do. The district would probably be best advised to abolish the Community Relations Department and divide the responsibilities among several departments. This would appease those that think you don't need a "PR" department.