001okay mr rittenhouse whenever you are ready thank you i'm sorry i didn't hear you good afternoon and welcome to the communications ad hoc committee of the akron public schools on april the 26th of 2021 um thank you for uh being here um and i like to welcome everyone um and per our usual uh agenda i always like to start it off just by reading the purpose of this particular committee um that dr akbar recommended start so the purpose of the communications ad hoc committee is to study the communities and constituencies that the district has received low to no connection utilizing current tools also to identify practices and shortcomings and concluding with the report with the recommendations to the board that will include who these constituencies are ideas on how to close any gaps and what
002are the messages that may broaden our appeal that we want to get out so thank you for accommodating me on reading our purpose of this committee and again welcome so um i don't know if anyone had any questions or comments uh regarding the meeting the minutes that were included yeah we had so much going on i was able to share out at the last general board meeting uh about our committee i thought we had a really robust conversation a lot of great information came out of that meeting um and so i'm just looking forward to learning uh even more about our various ways that we're doing well and how we can incorporate that throughout uh the district so um part of that is in having invited perspectives um suggested by this committee and others um
003to come and share with us and as a result result of that um that's why marcia pullman is here i'm invited to this meeting today so welcome and thank you for being here um you were recommended to come and share um any comments or thoughts or that you have around communication um how you are currently integrated in that area specifically uh for our district so that we can learn so thank you uh turn it over to you at this time and and let you share what you like well go ahead marsha help yourself here david and mark did you want me to address for college and career academies yeah i think so that's been something that's been kind of missing from our meetings that we need to fill that in you'd be yeah absolutely perfect
004okay sure so just a quick background or overview for the marketing and communication for college we have two master plans that we uh use as kind of our guiding document for how we do our communications so there's a master plan for the high school as well as a master plan that was recently developed and proved for the middle school so there are objectives and strategies set in the master plan and every year we revisit the plan and develop our plan for the upcoming school year based on what was previously previously approved through those two master plans so then we also college career academies also reports out monthly highlights to the instructional policy committee of various initiatives that are going on specifically to college and career academies okay so thank you um and i'm new to
005the instructional policy committee so i have received uh those communications i think they're really helpful i think they're really helpful so um so how do you see uh as far as what specifically college and career academy is doing towards communications how do you envision it i guess moving forward in a way that i don't know may even broaden the appeal because i know that's one of the the goals of this committee is to how can we you know broaden our appeal and maybe even you know creatively think outside the box right so i i can speak to some of the things we've done through the master planning some of the objectives and strategies that we've um executed against and some of them that we are still in the process of doing um so the the
006first was establishing and reinforcing a strong brand for the college and career academies that works in connection with akron public schools we developed a uniform look that has a logo specific to college and career but it still incorporates akron public schools so you never have to doubt that college and career is separate from aps and then we took it one step further and developed a logo for each high school using their high school colors so we have the firestone college and career academies the brookdale college and career academies and all those also have akron public schools but they're unique to the schools based on their school colors we developed a lot of materials to support the schools we have various pathway cards we have some materials that our academy coaches are able to use we
007have pull-up banners they can use for various events and we just started in the last year and a half installing hallway signage in all of our schools specific to the academies so in the previous school year we were able to complete north and firestone and this school year even though it was a pandemic year we were able to complete east and buchtel we're missing one sign at booktube but that will be up um within the first week of summer this summer also we're working on ellet and stem and then when kenmore garfield is built we will be making sure that we install all the hallway signage at that school as well a second objective that we work on is we try to always reach our current and prospective students and families so we do monthly
008academy 101 sessions they're open to anybody in the district regardless of what school they attend but we make sure that the academies 101 happen at every high school throughout either high school or middle school throughout the school year so um anybody can come to any of them but that way we make sure we know within their cluster so it's at least at their cluster but they they can cross clusters and still get the same message because they're not not specific to that school we do an eighth grade showcase every year where all our eighth grade students come to explore the various academies and pathways but in the evening we invite all our families to come to so there's a designated time that families can come this past year being a covered year we did the
009whole thing virtual so they still had a virtual showcase experience and then there's a lot of support that happens in our freshman academies also third objective we do is we increase we want to make sure we're always increasing involvement with our business and our post-secondary partners so for any named academy partner or any sister college or university we have large partner events that people from the community people from akron public schools there's a there's a long list of people that get invited sometimes it's based on a capacity size of the room if we have a big room we invite a lot if we have a small room then we're we kind of narrow that down um to who we can invite to that but then we make sure all the communications go out everywhere afterwards
010regardless of the size of the event so the community is aware of that we also recognize all our partners um multiple ways on the college and care academy's website we do it on the college career academy's twitter and all of this i do in conjunction with mark williamson so that anything cauldron careers does is also going out in all the akron public schools newsletters so i don't don't work on a silo i do i do everything with mark or make sure he has all of our information to go out and then we also recognize our partners in our hallway signage so if it's an academy their name is on that academy signage and there's other other pieces of signage that we still need to work on and it's just been a time consuming project so
011i would say within the next year to two years we should have all the all the other signage up um and then our fourth objective is in creating the informed culture of principals teachers and support staff there's team training that happens every year we produce an annual report every year that goes out and on the back end of that we we do measure um how much placement received how many hits we're getting on our website how many hits or retweets we're getting on our twitter account and from there we can um continually make adjustments to try to to improve improve our reach but that's that's really a top line overview of the work that's been happening according to the two master plans in college and career academies so you mentioned the um the monthly academy
012101 meetings i'm interested like have you had been following how many people are you getting a lot of folks on average to attend those i know each year you know with the upcoming like freshman class it probably increases around that time but do you find those to be well attended or are families take able to take advantage of it i don't have that data here but i i can get that data for you okay but there is somebody that tracks our attendance at those meetings okay yeah i was just curious okay and i mean it's evident you know i've been around through that whole process of when ccas came to fruition and i mean it really you guys done a great job with the branding and it's very clear nice you know i liked how
013you know the colors for each school was incorporated um you know in the logo um so does anybody anybody else on the committee have any questions or comments no okay well um i appreciate you taking the time out your lunch hour to come and share with us um and certainly you know all of this information um again we're just trying to uh you know look at best practices and how to make it uh you know good communications prac uh process across the whole district you know and you guys are doing a lot of uh you know great things and it's very evident so thank you um you're welcome to stay um if you'd like um but we'll absolutely move on um if there's no objections or any other questions for miss pullman okay well thank
014you for having me thank you very much okay so um been a lot of uh things to communicate lately uh mr williamson um so uh this time uh turn it over to you um to share any updates uh that you might have um since we last met uh we are working feverishly on the summer school programming websites all the web content collateral materials flyers mailers all kinds of things um to get that done there's a lot that's one of the reasons it's taking a while is because there's we're offering so many things um but it looks good the graphics that go with it are really nice it's a happy fun looking presentation that you'll see when it's done the art museum has asked us to help them this project and i don't know enough about
015it i just always say yes but they wanted pictures of our mascots that they're going to use and something they're going to be doing about akron in the coming weeks and i'm trying to round up um images of of every school mascot whether it's a human in a uh or if it's just a graphic image because the elementary schools tend to just have like like a mustang or a wolf or something but the high schools you know may have something um have a really nice picture of larry johnson wearing the falcon um of course you can't tell it's layered that's really good it's it's actually i wish we had one from every high school it would be really cool um but that's i i can't wait to see what they do with that i i
016haven't asked i'm just going to be surprised we did start working with carla chapman on marketing uh the employee resource groups and the diversity equity and inclusion programs that she's going to be overseeing because you know not just we're not just going to do that work we have to build we have to build that let's say image it's not an image we have to we have to build that part of who we are now into our messaging and into our onto our website and the communications that we have we need to make sure that we let people know that this is a new path and a new direction that um i mean i'm not sure if that's the right way to put it but we're working with carla and it's a lot it's a big
017um it's it's like we're looking at like the next year trying to figure out what she's going to need when to make all that happen and help support what she's doing um backpack adventures coming up again this summer at the zoo always incredibly popular we are working on the campaign for that for the visuals and graphics but also the handouts we do a lot of giveaways here that go to kids parents faculty members we have almost like almost like a little general store up here um with all kinds of things in it that we keep buying more because it's becoming more popular so that's another way we market ourselves quite honestly is that we have things with our name on it that go out into the community and uh spread the word of aps so
018that is part of the business if you will here that's grown tremendously since i started working here we we focus um a good deal of our budget on on giveaways there are good will gestures people like them they're fun we've kind of honed in on the items that kids really like uh in the things that adults like and because our teachers are a big part they come up to us or people from you know the teaching community here will come up to our offices and say i need 50 something i've got another group coming in that would like to have something and we um so renee garrett in our office does does all of that for us and that's a that's a really good thing and then hubspot i always have to mention that because
019that's growing and changing we we only have about 10 i think 10 schools left that are not on facebook yet or don't have an account so we're working with those last 10 but we're up to you know more than 30 now and we've been i know diane i see you on facebook a lot we've been putting things out not just on the district facebook page but we replicate a lot of what we do on all 30 plus school web facebook pages where necessary and that has been uh i think that's been pretty good anecdotally uh i've heard from quite a few people that like seeing something pop up there which means they weren't they weren't looking at it on the district page they they just watched their own schools and that's great so that's working
020out pretty well i'm sure i'm missing something but i'll stop there no absolutely that's good stuff that's good stuff so i mean we're doing so much i think it's really great work and then again just listening to marsha and what you're doing i mean it's just i guess i want i want schools to know that they have that opportunity you know like at their building level as well you know and how do we get them you know i think we're working towards that but i mean it's just the opportunity i believe is is really out there for you know them to kind of take their narrative you know because there's nothing like that day-to-day i mean they people in their buildings they know better than anybody else what's going on and they're they're things that
021you know we might not know at this level so for them to have in their hands that opportunity to you know so i could not agree with you more um and that's one of those things that we've been trying to do here for quite a while is to get the the buy-in from each school um you know we provide a ton of content i mean i don't know what most schools do but we're getting we're bumping things off of our own front page on our website in one day which means we have four or five news items in a day we have great media coverage of what we do i think um compared to other school districts i'll i'll say it that way uh and so and every time there's something in the media we
022try to get it out on all social media and our website some things maybe don't work on everything we have to decide what goes where so but but if i'm one of our schools i would see that and i would because we we urge them to take it run with it use it create your own stuff use our stuff and i think that's why the hubspot idea with facebook works because we just basically put it there where we are we are putting our stuff on their facebook pages um because i think it's like a bank if there's a central office in downtown of a bank and all the branch offices they all have to be doing the same thing they all have to have the same colored pens and notepads and the signs got to
023be the same everywhere we all work together as a team that um is it has to have that support for we they get it from us and and uh you know we want to have that support from them quite a few of our schools you know send things our way but we still have a challenge with other schools that don't the communication isn't going both directions so we've got to have to work on that i think hot spot will help though in fact i know it will so mark have you noticed as more and more schools are utilizing it um how are they managing their perspective pages do they have a team of folks have they designate a person designated a person like you know is the pta giving them a stipend to stick to
024it like you know you're not getting paid now but like how is it or is it different at every school i think it's different in every school but for the most part there's usually with facebook the thing that makes that work not just here but all over the world is that it's easy and people like it so somebody it's probably not that hard to get one person at each school who can say i'll do this you know and and that's what we've seen in most schools we communicate with the principal and then the principal um helps us connect with their facebook account i haven't gotten names of anybody yet i'm just glad to see that we're able to post things but that's a great question because that's the thing that we need is a face
025and a name for each school too so we can contact them on our websites we have ryan hale who's in our tech department who posts things on the web and he's come up with a pretty good way to get schools to do posts but it's still sort of dependent on how we're sending them the information what i really wanted to see is for them to take a camera into their own classrooms and take pictures of activities and fun things at each school and put those on the website and we just really honestly haven't seen that facebook i think will change that because i think it's just it's just quicker it's faster it's easier um it doesn't have it's not quite as rigid in terms of graphics and things like that people can have more fun
026with it so that's right that's why i think we're going in that direction i'm not sure what the future will be of our school websites that's something we have to we have to address okay thank you so much mrs isaac did you have anything you'd like to share with us at all any input well so one as mark was talking what i was thinking we have so ryan hale is our webmaster and he works with i'm drawing a blank in their title but there's one person at each building that's a technology instructional technology support person and it's not the building tss the technology support specialist but they have a supplemental contract and one of the responsibilities is to keep the website updated um i don't think that it's social media mark or or dr james
027you may know but i do know that it is for the website um and so those people are the ones who when ryan sends some send something out they put those updates out um but i do so for my comment i'm really uh anxious to see how hubspot and i agree with mark it's definitely going to benefit us it's a step in the right direction it's kind of that push they might need and an easy way to do it so the district is is sending the teacher of the year it can we can send that out so you don't have to the person doesn't have to wait to get the posting kind of goes out from the district or kindergarten registration so we're making sure that they're getting all of those district messages and then
028also giving them control over when they want to add something to um i think we're on the right track this is exactly what we need in addition to being able to track and see like where are families going what are they opening you know is there a cluster maybe that is using a different means to accessing information and we need to you know focus more on that because everybody might not be using the same i mean there might be some families um that prefer different ways to get communication so my comment would be and i was very happy when i heard that we were going with hubspot because i think that was one of the things uh that we were certainly missing and i also think it's going to be what's getting the ball rolling
029with this to keep it consistent make sure it goes to all the schools and also give them control over things that they want to post as well i would agree i would agree okay quick question for the dinosaur here can someone explain to me what hubspot is um i wish i could come up with an analogy hubspot is a company that you hire to coordinate all of your social whatever you want to use social media we're just going to say facebook in this case and they make it possible for us to form a network of social media sites that we otherwise wouldn't be able to do and we can actually they have they have a calendar we can actually schedule postings three years out i mean i don't know what i'm doing tomorrow but but
030if we if i did i could put it on facebook um and and you can so you can if you have a campaign let's say like we do with the browns with our stay in the game campaign uh we we have regular postings that go now to all of our participating facebook schools not just the district which is great because it's an incentive for attendance so it's going to you know most of our schools and all we do is we make one post and you click on all the schools you want to have it and it automatically simultaneously goes to all of them so your message gets out all at the same time there was no there's no way we could do that without that without that service valerie that's what they provide they it
031goes way beyond that they also do an analysis of your data and of what people like what they don't like and how long they look at it and those are all things that we're going to need for some other things down the road so i think that that's where we grow with it is in that area but for right now just the you know raw meat if you will is just take the information and get it out there to as many people as you can and i i would use the browns as a as a really great example because that's something we want all of our kids to see every grade level and if we rely on our website to do that they'd never see it i know this but with facebook there's a good
032chance that they that they will and then the teachers see it because teachers even when they're off weekends holidays whatever i see them looking at our facebook stuff and they'll share it that's the other great thing is if they see something they like they'll share it and so it goes way beyond what we could even post into these other areas of the virtual world that we live in does that make sense it does thanks i appreciate the explanation okay so there's no rule that says we have to meet for an hour i'm not one of those types of people bless you but i do have a i do have a um a question about you know who who are we not thinking about who else should be here so that we can hear you know
033we're hearing all the great things you know and that's good too but you know i i also want to hear from maybe where we can grow because that's the whole purpose is so that we can grow in addition to continue to do what we're doing well so you know i know i mentioned secretaries i know they're busy but i just something tells me that they have this perspective that we're missing here because i love secretaries they know everything they're your best friends in the building along with the custodians so but i don't know if anyone else has a thought on who can be an invited perspective moving forward that's what i was going to suggest maybe we get representatives from support staff like you said secretaries custodial staff i think all of those have valuable
034insight just don't listen when they complain about all of my emails okay [Laughter] just do me do me that favor because no um i think that's a good idea i i also ryan ryan rittenhouse who couldn't be here today because he's actually making this thing appear uh virtually because that's his job is a tremendous resource for us that nobody ever sees you know he kind of works a lot on his own but all the videos that are produced all come from ryan he's a really creative guy and i would love if i don't know if there's any way possible for him to actually he's probably gonna he's probably come after me after this but but i think it would be really great for ryan to be in some of these just because he has he
035has really good and he's really blunt i'll add that he's he's very direct um but you know and he has a lot of ideas for solutions to problems and he gets put a lot of video ends up going to video ideas of people that go to ryan everybody kind of says well i think we should do a video you know they don't always have an idea of how they want to do it or what it's going to take but then they go to ryan and he very often just creates something and um some sometimes like just the last year or so have been uh just on an unending stream of work for ryan especially with all the extra board meetings and things like that he's been really really busy and um that's why he would
036make a good addition to this not doesn't have to come to everyone but i think once in a while it'd be good to hear from ryan okay well i mean then i would like to invite him you know to an upcoming meeting um i think our directive is it to have a a draft by july so i mean we still have time so we now in july i would love to have him invited so yeah i'll talk to him about that if he can find someone else to if he can do both things at once and he usually can do like four things at one time um then we can make this happen but i'll make a note to ask him okay absolutely anybody else i you know i i think we i may have
037said this last time but i would love to see mae walker invited she is in carla sibley's office she's in charge of family liaisons she'd be a really good yeah she'd be a really good person to get that family you know because all of us sitting here i bet everybody here has our own way we get information certain things we like and it would be nice for her you know she has that group of uh people who reach out to families that might benefit us to get a little bit of that perspective okay yeah she was at the last meeting yeah yeah she was at the last oh was she here okay she know what you have to say i would maybe she can i don't know if there are any willing families you know
038that might she might have that connection for us to share so that would be nice to even maybe have a family member regularly attend maybe somebody from each different cluster attend on a rotating basis okay those are some good ideas okay and then make and maybe help us coordinate that so i'll oh that'll be uh that's good information to work on um and that's really all that i have unless anyone has anything else they'd like to share who just want to sit for another 30 minutes i'm good okay thank you so much everybody for attending i'll see everybody a little later on thank thank you you