District Improving Communication Efforts

Efforts to connect parents and the community with schools are showing some payoff in the Greendale School District.

Bill Attewell, district director of technology, told the Greendale School Board Monday the district has seen success in the past several years growing its communication efforts and people are paying attention to the information.

This year we’ve had a lot of key messages we’ve had to deliver,” he said. “We’ve had a new superintendent, a new school board member, the threat at the high school, Gov. Walker’s budget repair bill, so there have been a lot of messages.”

Internet communication has grown significantly for the district, with district website visits growing from 501,199 in the 2007-08 school year to more than 1 million in the 2011-12 school year. During the same time, individual page visits grew from 2 million to 3.2 million.

Attewell also emphasized the unique views to the district websites, which grew from 107,822 in 07-08 to 230,890 in 11-12, despite Greendale being a community of less than 20,000 people.

“People from outside our community are looking at what we’re doing here in Greendale,” he said. “It’s very interesting information.”   

The district is also using Twitter to get information out to parents and students, with at least one tweet per day being sent out last year.

Mindy Anderson, family and community engagement facilitator for the district, said the district is working to make more communication improvements in the 2012-13 school year, such as implementing a volunteer coordination system to better track volunteer hours and engaging families and the community in the schools.

The district will also work to communicate the new Wisconsin report cards being handed out by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction under new standards assessments.

The district will also begin communication efforts to create stronger relationship with alumni to use them as a potential resource and keep them engaged at what is going on in the schools.

Anderson said the district will also conduct a community survey to see what other communication efforts residents would like implemented.

“It has been a few years since the last community survey has been conducted,” she said. “And obviously a lot of things have changed in the last few years.”