April 2000

BACKGROUND: The McMinnville School District does not have a public relations person on staff -- but after attending an OSBA workshop, the school board realized there were simple, basic elements it could do on its own to create closer connections to its community. Plus, recent events (e.g., the student search incident that resulted in local and national media attention) drove home the point that school districts should not rely on the news media alone to reach their public with the information they wanted to convey.

WHAT THEY DID: The School Board’s Public Relations Subcommittee used a comprehensive handout Building Support for your Schools to start a Key Communicator Program last winter. The group came up with 120 names from membership lists for the following groups: Site councils, City Council, McMinnville SD Foundation Board members and contributors; audience members from school board meetings; Bond Committee members and other civic and community service groups. An introductory letter was mailed in January, inviting this group to be a "key communicator". The letter was accompanied by the state’s new District Report Card. The letter also mentioned that it would "drop" the recipient’s name from the list; however only one person asked to be removed and several called to thank the district for the letter.

"Setting up Key Communicators is easy," says Karen Richey, the district Human Resource Director and "staff" person assigned to help the board’s PR Subcommittee. "It helps to have good mailing lists and the ability to merge them to get letters and labels quickly out." The district plans to send letters quarterly, along with materials that will be tailored to the Key Communicator Group. "We can target a lot of the information from our newsletters and other communications to our Key Communicators," she adds.

The second Key Communicator letter went out April 20 -- just in time to send the district’s Budget Message and a summary of events since January, including the reassignment of district staff. A major asset of Key Communicators is to get accurate information out quickly to these opinion leaders, so the district can avoid damaging, misleading rumors. Opinion leaders, when armed with accurate information, will share it with their friends and neighbors -- which creates a positive ripple effect to counteract false rumors.

"The important thing to remember is to start out small, or the tasks can seem overwhelming," Richey says, noting McMinnville is starting gradually and will build up next year to other activities, such as community forums.