By Alex Malm
The School Board received an update from the district’s Communications Committee during their Tuesday, Aug. 8, meeting.
It was explained by Amity Small that the communications committee met for the first time in the Spring of 2022 after not meeting during the pandemic.
She explained that as a committee, they decided that the main goal was to get out as much information as possible out into the community.
Over the past year, some of the things Small has said has been accomplished, including sharing what is happening in their schools on social media, providing budget information, doing an overhaul of the website, creating new handles for social media, and “celebrating staff and students.”
“Our major undertaking was to celebrate our staff and students for the good things that were going on in one place,” Small said.
One way to measure how they are doing with communication was through surveys. One of the questions asked was how satisfied people are with communication from the district office, which about 95% of survey respondents said they were satisfied or highly satisfied with.
“Schools had a similar response,” Small said.
Another question that was asked was where people get their information from. Small said according to the survey results, about 96% of respondents get their information from email, about 74% get it from texting, 11.8% get their information from the website, and about 10.6% get their information from social media.
One increase in activity the district has seen when it comes to communication is Instagram, something Small said teachers are using more of to show off students’ achievements.
After looking at the data and hearing feedback from parents and the community, Small said it was decided that they would have all their official information on their website knowing that not everyone uses social media.
“At the root of all of this, the website really is where official information is and email is what comes from the schools because either people love social media or they don’t,” Small said.
School Board member, Amanda Butcher, said she thought they have done a good job at promoting the school district and what is happening through the communications committee.
“I think we really needed to kind of show what was going on globally within our schools and I think that you worked so hard with the whole team to do that,” Butcher said.